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StormFly is on Kickstarter and it needs your support!
I don't know if you've heard about StormFly but it was available at Minecon 2012 at one of the booths where I was volunteering (you might have seen me, tall blond). It's basically a usb memory stick with Ubuntu installed on it in an orange rubber bracelet, and at Minecon it came with Minecraft preinstalled which I thought was pretty cool .
For the people that don't know about Linux and LiveUSBs and stuff, all this means is that you can play at Minecraft or any Linux Steam game on any computer you plug StormFly into, which means carrying your saved games with you (without having to connect to Internet), which means carrying your worlds with you, which means productive gaming awesomeness! But that also goes for other programs not only games, and if you code like me, that's a pretty cool thing to take with you.
Now before you troll, I actually started working for the company (Now Computing) after Minecon because I was offered a job as customer support but wasn't convinced at first. So, before joining, being a developer myself and a Minecraft player and PC gamer, I did some research to figure out if I could do this on my own, because StormFly costs $59 for 16GB and $79 for 32GB which is a bit out of my normal budget. After doing the research I figured out that if I did it on my own it would actually cost the same amount besides being a pain in the neck. Because StormFly has no ordinary Linux installation, they strugle a lot to explain this, but it has something they called "smart boot" which let's you boot on any PC, it doesn't matter if it has EFI, UEFI, BIOS or if it's a mac with all the security stuff they put in them (if you've done a Linux installation on a usb you probably know what I'm talking about), this basically means that they've been testing on a butload of laptops, desktops and macs, and readjusting the smart booter to solve the peculiarities of Vaio computers, as well as Samsung and HP computers. But that's not all of it, because StormFly has to run an OS they selected a special type of flash memory called MLC and a special controller for it. If you google MLC usb memory stick, you'll figure out that they cost exactly the same as StormFly, and they're just plain memory sticks with nothing on them. Finally, StormFly also comes with a back up service that is absolutely optional that uploads all of your data encrypted just in case you lose your device you get an identical one back, it's a personal choice and I personally prefer to use other services besides this, but I can see why this sounds so attractive.
Anyways, I've come to believe that although they have trouble explaining to people what StormFly is and they get trolled by techies constantly (us techies can be douchebags when we don't realize), it's a very cool device with great value and I'm very happy with it.
Their mission is to give one to every child, so that they learn what Linux is and so that they can have their personal stuff like programs or the OS's appearance that they can take anywhere (school, a friend's house, grandma's house), even if they don't have a PC. I think that's pretty cool.
So please back the project on Kickstarter and spread the word, we need your support!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/750 ... your-wrist?
I don't know if you've heard about StormFly but it was available at Minecon 2012 at one of the booths where I was volunteering (you might have seen me, tall blond). It's basically a usb memory stick with Ubuntu installed on it in an orange rubber bracelet, and at Minecon it came with Minecraft preinstalled which I thought was pretty cool .
For the people that don't know about Linux and LiveUSBs and stuff, all this means is that you can play at Minecraft or any Linux Steam game on any computer you plug StormFly into, which means carrying your saved games with you (without having to connect to Internet), which means carrying your worlds with you, which means productive gaming awesomeness! But that also goes for other programs not only games, and if you code like me, that's a pretty cool thing to take with you.
Now before you troll, I actually started working for the company (Now Computing) after Minecon because I was offered a job as customer support but wasn't convinced at first. So, before joining, being a developer myself and a Minecraft player and PC gamer, I did some research to figure out if I could do this on my own, because StormFly costs $59 for 16GB and $79 for 32GB which is a bit out of my normal budget. After doing the research I figured out that if I did it on my own it would actually cost the same amount besides being a pain in the neck. Because StormFly has no ordinary Linux installation, they strugle a lot to explain this, but it has something they called "smart boot" which let's you boot on any PC, it doesn't matter if it has EFI, UEFI, BIOS or if it's a mac with all the security stuff they put in them (if you've done a Linux installation on a usb you probably know what I'm talking about), this basically means that they've been testing on a butload of laptops, desktops and macs, and readjusting the smart booter to solve the peculiarities of Vaio computers, as well as Samsung and HP computers. But that's not all of it, because StormFly has to run an OS they selected a special type of flash memory called MLC and a special controller for it. If you google MLC usb memory stick, you'll figure out that they cost exactly the same as StormFly, and they're just plain memory sticks with nothing on them. Finally, StormFly also comes with a back up service that is absolutely optional that uploads all of your data encrypted just in case you lose your device you get an identical one back, it's a personal choice and I personally prefer to use other services besides this, but I can see why this sounds so attractive.
Anyways, I've come to believe that although they have trouble explaining to people what StormFly is and they get trolled by techies constantly (us techies can be douchebags when we don't realize), it's a very cool device with great value and I'm very happy with it.
Their mission is to give one to every child, so that they learn what Linux is and so that they can have their personal stuff like programs or the OS's appearance that they can take anywhere (school, a friend's house, grandma's house), even if they don't have a PC. I think that's pretty cool.
So please back the project on Kickstarter and spread the word, we need your support!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/750 ... your-wrist?
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