Carry Your Computer Desktop on a USB Key With Keepod's Free Operating System | Hacker News Reader

Carry Your Computer Desktop on a USB Key With Keepod's Free Operating System

nocamels.com

25 pointsjackau13 comments

Whats special about this? It looks like any other linux distribution on an usb stick, maybe with a stronger focus on non-techie end users.

This is the OS. They also had a card that had the OS, and some other stuff, on it.

http://nocamels.com/2013/01/keepod-the-desktop-that-fits-in-...

> Keepod’s multi-facetious technology allows it to store the most diverse types of data. Apart from the aforementioned OS, it also includes a smartcard (the small, square, golden chips common on most payment cards); hardware encryption of military caliber and, an NFC chip. So the Keepod can be used as a credit card, a public transport voucher and even to open the door to your office. On the screen, Nissan Bahar held up a Keepod in one hand and a smartphone in the other: “When I go to work, I only take these two things with me. The Keepod is the only card I have to carry in my wallet.”

The info is scarce and the websites poorly managed. Found something on a VMWare page[1], but the website they link to looks like a autogenerated spam page.

> Keepod™ ( http://www.mykeepod.com/) is the world’s slimmest USB secure portable device. Sized as a credit card and equipped with robust enterprise class encryption, Keepod provides a complete offering for business users. With up to 16GB of secure storage, Keepod stores all the user’s files and run applications on the go.

Then the release notes for the latest version say something about "Keepod Classic", but I found no other mention of this device.

> UEFI Secure Boot support! (available for only USB drives, Keepod Classic device support coming soon)

[1] http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/keypod-vmw-ibm.h...

[2] http://keepod.tumblr.com/post/61491388269/keepod-os-12-4-cav...

I would imagine some serious work on graphics drivers and hardware recognition as well. Running it on 'old wrecks' with nvidia cards could be fun if not.

I think the marketing is to non-technical users and I get the subtext about 'parent's computer' meaning students/pupils who might not have a box of their own.

it's exactly what you describe and it's special because of it:

http://www.keepod.com/about/

From your link: >> Keepod is the first standardised version of a bootable OS for those of us without acomputer science degree.

I really don't see how it is to download a bootable version of any linux distro on a USB stick. Really, I don't see the point.

Sort of reminds me of Jolicloud, based on its focus on web-apps (from the screenshots anyway, it does allow for native apps though, just like Joli OS).

I actually ran Joli OS on a UNetBootin-ed USB with persistent storage setup. It works quite well, but I'll be perfectly honest, in this day and age it's rare that I have a computer that is:

a) Not mine b) Allows me to reboot into another OS from a USB

And most importantly, I've always got my laptop with me anyway. I can see the appeal, but I'm unsure of the real-world practicality outside of a small niche.

That said, this is from a first-world upper-middle-class perspective here. It may have potential in places where computers are shared amongst a lot of people perhaps?

In this day and age most people carry their laptop, tablet and\or their phone. Even students & workers without devices have their stuff on either the network\cloud or a simple no fuss USB stick. I'm not sure what kind of audience they want to appeal to AND if it will appeal to them for practical reasons. All that said, I really like their marketing and design (though I do wonder if they're paying licensing to Marvel\DC and not just waiting to get sued). It's curious to note that these guys have also been around for a while (since 2009?) and tried selling Keypod to the enterprise (i.e.symphony\citrix integration). I think that might have caved (they've since removed their "Keypod for Business" page) which is why it would make sense for them to be offering Keypod for free and trying to appeal to the "general public".

Yes they face the problem of cost, that is computers don't cost very much these days. Most people can have their own box. That being said this might be great for traveling and internet cafes where you don't know what kind of software and bad stuff is on there.

There are already bootable usb stick solutions out there but does 80%+ of the public know about it? I doubt it. This looks easy, people like easy!

And before Joli there was Knoppix which ran on CDs and then USB, After that, Ubuntu started doing book from USB.

Nothing is new or innovative about this idea.

The reason I brought up Joli was the focus on Web Apps South first-class (ish) citizens.

I used to run Slax on my school computers. That was fun

Okay, I tried this out, and am fairly unimpressed so far:

- The installer has dependencies that are not required by the package (e.g. mtools)

- Any errors during installation are not reported or handled; the installer just hangs unless you are watching terminal output

- Once you get it installed, the first-run wizard has the same unwillingness to report or handle errors

- The Keepod Cloud setup fails without explanation, and trying to navigate back to its beginning caused the machine to reboot

At that point, I gave up trying to set anything up and looked around; it looks similar to Peppermint OS from a user's point of view, but works less well at this point. It's pretty, if you like that, and it looks like you can do with it anything you can do with plain Ubuntu --- as long as it works. I think it's encrypting data, so that's nice, but I can't be induced to care based on its "multi-facetious technology". I didn't know what they meant by that before, but after trying it, I do.

I tried it and it doesn't work for me: " No root device found Dropping to debug shell."

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