User's Guide for the Live-CD / USB

GNUmed Live CD / USB (image) is available from the download section at the moment:

It is based on Debian-Live, a version of Linux which will run right off the CD or an USB drive, with no installation necessary. It does not change anything on your Computer. From the downloaded image (iso) file you can produce a CD or USB GNUmed demo.

Produce a GNUmed Live CD

Given you have a PC which can boot from CD, all you have to do is download the CD. Then use a program like k3b or xcdroast for Linux, Mac or a Windows program to burn the so called ISO image - the file you downloaded. Whatever burn program you use, don't burn the downloaded file as a file but rather find the option where it lets you burn bootable CD images. Any decent CD burning app should have this option (beware, the free Nero doesn't).

Then put the CD in the CD-ROM drive and let your PC start from it. It will boot into a graphical environment (XFCE). It will present you with a desktop icon which lets you start GNUmed. You can use this CD to connect to the public database over the internet or you can use a local database. Yes, that is right. A local GNUmed server can be started from this very CD as well.

So all you need is this CD, premade to provide an English, German, Spanish or French user interface.

Run Live-CD (image) Download from virtual CD without burning a real CD

Vmware, Virtualbox and Qemu are software products that let you run the Live-CD (image) from a virtual CD-ROM drive. See their documentation on how to set up a virtual machine with a virtual CD-drive.

As an example a short video showing how to use the Live-CD file (without burning the CD) inside Virtualbox is provided for your convenience.

Produce a GNUmed Live USB

There is a nice tool called UNetbootin available for download which will let you install the downloaded CD image (iso file) into a USB drive. Given you have a computer which can boot from USB drives (most recent PC can do this) simply select USB option at the computers startup and it will start GNUmed from the USB drive without altering your PC's harddrive.

Don't say we don't make it easy to test and use GNUmed.

Build your own Live-CD