(This is my reply to your post on the L.A.S. Linux site. I would also note that L.A.S. is on version 0.4, it's first public release was 0.3b. I have been developing L.A.S. for well over 6 months just not made it public)

The reasons you state in your post are the very reasons why I have made L.A.S. Linux. By targeting the size of a mini CD I insured that the focus stayed true. Each addition is weighed heavily due to the size limitation. Knoppix-STD is a good distro which on the forums was where I first announced L.A.S. But it is more of an 'all in one' distro which there is of course a need for, but it is not the same as L.A.S. The other goal I have set for L.A.S. is trying to release new versions on a 'regular schedule' instead of treating it as a hobby that one looses intrest in and time to work on (I am not refering to any distro in particular here). The main difference between L.A.S. and other security related distros is 700MB vs. 185MB. I wanted to also illustrate that one can put hundreds of tools along with a desktop and productivity tools in a package so small. The entire uncompressed L.A.S. 0.4 MAIN is only 503MB. Having what I believe is the greatest number of tools even compared to the larger distros. After all games and OpenOffice take up a great deal of space. (It is also much easier to find a computer with 256MB of RAM to run L.A.S. in than a machine with 1GB of RAM to run Knoppix or others in.)

As far as focus on tools you mentioned. I feel that L.A.S. is helping greatly in this pursuit. Being that I get many emails from users that would have otherwise never used most of these tools. So by increasing the userbase of these tools it in turn helps the authors make the tool better. If you refer to the FAQ I encourage users with bugs or issues regarding a tool (not L.A.S.) to contact its author to report this. Thus improving them.

To be fair in terms of security distros there is also:
PHLAK http://phlak.org
F.I.R.E. http://fire.dmzs.com/
Penguin Sleuth Kit http://www.linux-forensics.com/downloads.html

and a few others I believe, just can not recall. . .but please feel free to add them here to this thread to be fair to all. Although Knoppix-STD is evidently your favorite.

I hope this helps to explain your questions. Thanks for the well wishes!

Jascha

All really good points. Not much I can comment on here. (Except maybe that Knoppix-STD works awesome on my laptop with 128megs of ram)

Good luck with L.A.S.

Sorry. . . just to clarify, I was refering to using the 'toram' option which copies the entire L.A.S. image into the physical RAM to allow the CD to be removed. Which frees up the CDROM for burning or use while L.A.S. runs in memory. Which runs very fast in a machine with 256 or RAM being that L.A.S. is only 183MB. I find it very useful for data recovery and forensics. . .

Nice looking blog by the way. . .

-J-

If you have had a data loss situation youmay be interested in this site.

http://www.datamole.com

DM