Proprietary culture dumps a lot of disappointing experiences on me. I really had this brought home to me by a couple of toys my daughter received for Christmas this year, which just refused to work with our family’s Debian-based computers, and I have to wonder: what are these experiences teaching our children?

While waiting for the imminent release of PCLinuxOS 0.94 I started wishing for a USB flash drive to back up my /home data. I usually just buy the Live CD, but I then started to think, what I’d really like to have is the OS come on a flash drive. No installation would be necessary, just plug it in and use. Then in a flash, an epiphany, it became clear, the end of CDs is near.