Preamble

With the LiveCD/DVD method, we can safely test a Vafeo version on PC or MACIntel environment. The LiveCD/DVD boots the system from the CD / DVD, and then only uses the memory and processor of the machine: IT DOES NOT TOUCH THE HARD DISK, therefore no risk of losing anything.

You have been warned: do not hesitate to go there! The joy of true freedom in a world of quality and completely open wait us.

Prerequisites

The Vafeo distributions support the most common machines today. This includes those containing a processor in the x86 architecture: every PC with a Intel or AMD processor and the new Mac equipped with Intel chips (known as MacIntel) do.

Depending on the distribution, memory can vary from 256 mega bytes to several Gigabytes. In the most common situations, a machine with 512 Mega bytes is sufficient in most cases. Plus the machine has memory faster it will be.

To start the machine with a CD, we need a CD or DVD ... player !

Making the choice of distribution(s)

It depends on what you are looking for. Vafeo offers several integrated custom distributions. If you are a regular user of Windows or MacOS, there is a good chance that you are interested in distributions vd_ ... which are those reserved for office machines or laptops. If you are not a developer then your choice can be:

•  Vd_home: a distribution which offers a playful environment for the family. This distribution suggests the MMS environment (MMS My Media System) as a multimedia station. In addition PeerTV and Miro, with more than 3000 Internet television channels are there for your pleasure. Also karaoke tools , video editing, Ipod reader, and so on, contribute to the playful spirit of this distribution.

•  Vd_arts: if you are an artist in the search for free solutions to freely exercise your art . All the great design and video  software such as GIMP, Blender, Cinelerra, Kino, Scribus, Inkscape, Hugin, ... are included in vd_arts to propose an integrated environment. A true professional graphics studio is this distribution.

•  Vd_audio: still in beta test but it promises to be an interesting companion for the musicians. The best free software for music come together in this distribution to form a truly professional recording studio. The fans of musics find Ardour, Rosegarden, Mixxx, effects of any kind.

•  Vd_gaming: contains the most famous free games . You will find FPS, strategy, reflection, ... games. In short,  everything you need to relax.

• Vd_juniors: offers you a lot of educational softwares for 8 to 15 years old children.
  

• Vd_kids: you cal use this distribution for children from 4 to 8. It contains the most famous educational Linux softwares for kids.
  

•  Vd_xdesktop: If you are seeking a general solution you can take this distribution. It is a catch-all solution for the workstation user. The Xfce4 GUI supports proposed aesthetics and performance.

•  Vd_office: if you look for a solution for your company then vd_office is for you. It is a distribution for desktop or laptop  workstation  which is suitable for an office environment. The classics for office station, OpenOffice 2.2, planner Planner, DIA tool design and GIMP are part of vd_office. A set of tools for access to "legacy" systems (MVS, Unix, Windows) is also proposed.

Make your choice.  Once installed, a distribution gives you the ability to install products that are part of other distributions. And anyway what you may risk is the price of blank CD / DVD .

Download a Vafeo iso image

Download the iso image of the vafeo distribution you fancy. The upload time is variable depending on the quality of your internet line. There are times quite painful because there are too many requests for downloading at the same time. Our server has its limitations. It is a small server leased from a service provider that offers a line of very high speed but with a poor capacity machine. It was with the means at hand!

If you feel that there is a weakness on the response time of our server you can download distributions Vafeo on sourceforge at:
 https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=204439&package_id=256913&release_id=565448

Thanks to sourceforge.net  for having accepted our iso images.

Unfortunately for vd_gaming: its iso  image is too big to be on sourceforge. You are therefore forced to spend on this site, yes it, to download.

Burn the iso image to a CD or DVD

You have managed to download an iso. To boot the machine it is necessary to put the image on a CD / DVD. The specialists may also test a Vafeo distribution using a virtualization tool for directly  reading iso image without having to burn a CD / DVD: but this is another matter.

For Windows:

You can use any burning tool for this task. Be aware that there are freewares in the Windows and Mac worlds for that. For example you can use the free software InfraRecorder that allows you to burn your CDs and DVDs on Microsoft Windows, it provides many features for a variety of burning.
Another example for burning the ISO file to a DVD: on a windows pc use   burnatonce (3,8 MB), download and install, insert a blank DVD, then File | Load new image go to the vafeo iso file you downloaded, and click on the button Write.

For MAC OS/X :

OS X includes a CD / DVD player. There are several opportunities to access these features. For a selection, read this macosxhints.com article and the comments on it. The easiest method seems to be to open Disk Utility, type CMD + B and choose the image to burn.

Whatever the burning tool you choose, be sure to use iso format.

Booting a PC with a CD or DVD

All relatively recent computers allow booting from the CD-ROM, however most are set up to find the operating system only on the hard drive.

In order to force your computer to boot from the CD-ROM, most of the time you can just press a button dedicated at boot (generally F8, F9, ...) in order to select the device startup. This is the preferred method because it is by far the simplest.

Another method is to set the BIOS of your PC to search each time the system of exploitation in the first place on the CD-ROM and not watch it on the hard drive underneath. For this you need to again push a button dedicated at boot (Del, F1, ...) which will allow you to enter the BIOS. Please check the menu option "advanced configuration", "boot order" or "boot options" and then you can define the CD-ROM as the primary boot device and the hard drive as the second year.

The fact to change the order of boot time should not greatly change the behavior of your machine. With this new setup, your machine will attempt to start with what it firstly founds in the CD / DVD player. If it finds something then it starts the machine with this thing. If there is nothing in the CD / DVD player then it continues to inspect the hard drive as before.

Booting a Mac machine (with Intel processor)

If you do not know the type of processor in your machine : there's not a matter. Let's say that the new MAC machines are equipped Intel processors. You can always try the following procedure, if it does not function, there is a good chance that you have a MAC of older generation.

Booting the machine MacOS as usual. Put the CD / DVD Vafeo in the drive. Then boot the machine.

The machine restarted with the CD in its  player : be careful press the <option> button at boot time. This has the effect that the machine asks you what you are preferred support. Choose to boot the machine from the CD / DVD drive.

Boot procedure

Your machine starts up and begins to read the CD / DVD. The first important step is done!

In the next paragraph, vd_home serves as a boot example.

During the boot process, this screen appears:





Then after a while, longer or shorter depending on the power of your machine, the screen appears which offers the choice of language. Choose the language you want, for example fr_FR.UTF8 then click OK






That's it! The home screen of the distribution happens:





And finally vd_home environment: