The Moka5 team is pleased to announce another release of Moka5 Engine! New features include:

• Mac Edition now available: We have released a preview version of Moka5 Engine for Mac! Now you can use LivePCs on any Mac that has VMware Fusion installed.
• Unattended install: Building a Windows LivePC just got a lot easier. We have integrated the xpfromcd tool into Moka5 Engine directly, so you can just enter your information (Username, Machine Name, and Product Key) and Moka5 Engine does the rest.
• Update notification: Moka5 Engine will now indicate when an updated version of a LivePC is available.
• Upgrade to VMware Player 2.0.2: Moka5 Engine now comes bundled with the latest version of VMware Player.
• BareMetal updated: Moka5 Engine for BareMetal has been updated for improved compatibility and better configuration control.

Extending the LivePC platform to the Mac is something we've had in the works for a while and I'm very happy to be able to share this preview version with our users. Mac users with VMware Fusion can now run the same LivePCs that run on Windows and BareMetal, and build and share LivePCs with friends or the community. Cross-platform support is a big part of our goal of making it possible to use your computing environment anywhere.

Please try it out and let us know what you think!

I'll be giving a presentation on Moka5 at the Stanford Open Source Group this evening, at 6:45pm in Gates Room 104. (Coincidentally, it's the same room where I defended my Ph.D. dissertation what seems like ages ago.) If you are in the Bay Area, please drop by to get some free Moka5 swag and hear more about some of the cool stuff we are doing at Moka5.

In time for VMworld, the Moka5 team is pleased to announce the release of Moka5 Engine for Windows Beta 18. Here are a few of the new features in Beta 18:

• Easy LivePC creation: The new wizard makes it even easier to make a new LivePC. Start from an install CD or one of our preconfigured LivePC templates and make your own LivePC in just a few clicks.
• Protect your Engine with a password: Mobile users can protect their Moka5 Engine with a password.
• Drag-and-drop support: Drag-and-drop LivePC shortcuts to your desktop or start menu, and launch your LivePCs directly without opening Moka5 Engine.
• A new simplified look: Fewer buttons, clearer progress indicators, and a new streamlined look make Beta 18 the most user-friendly Engine yet.
• One-step download: Easily share a LivePC with others, even if they don’t have Moka5 Engine installed. LivePC links now automatically download Moka5 Engine if it is not already installed.

After a long hiatus, everyone at moka5 is very happy to announce the release of a new version of moka5 Engine for Bare Metal!

What is Bare Metal, you may ask? Bare Metal is a stripped-down version of Linux that boots directly into moka5 Engine. You can install it directly on a computer, creating a computing terminal for running your LivePCs.

I'm happy to announce a new release of moka5 Engine for Windows: Beta 17! This version has some great new features:

• Run as non-Administrator: You asked for it, you got it! In certain situations you can now run moka5 Engine from a limited-access guest account.
• Improved disk performance: Your LivePCs will now run even smoother, especially during heavy disk activity.
• USB hot-unplug support: moka5 Engine is now more tolerant of sudden disconnections when running from a USB device.
• VMPlayer 2.0 now bundled: moka5 Engine now comes bundled with the latest release of VMPlayer, which includes better support for Windows Vista and USB 2.0.

I'm sitting at the SYS-CON Virtualization Conference in NYC, listening to the Keynote by Sun VP of Global Systems Engineering, Dr. Hal Stern. Dr. Stern is talking about the future of virtualization and service-oriented architectures (SOA). He described the move toward more dynamic architectures, with faster development cycles, more user-generated content, and increased leveraging of open source technologies.

I'll be attending the SYS-CON Virtualization Conference in New York on June 25-27 as a representative of moka5. If you track me down in New York and mention this blog post, I'll give you a free exclusive custom-made high-performance moka5 USB flash drive, valued at $29.95. This is probably the highest-performance 1GB USB drive available and is Vista ReadyBoost capable. I'll also be giving demos of the latest from moka5 and other swag. See you there!

Today's Distro of the Day is Fedora 7. Fedora is the free community version of Red Hat Linux. Fedora 7 is the latest and greatest of the Fedora Core series. It was just released June 1st and was published in the LivePC library by a community member by June 5th.

The codename for Fedora 7 is "Moonshine" and it features a new visual style called "Flying High". Indeed, many parts of the system like the default backgrounds and login screens include hot air balloons and other themed elements.

Today's Distro of the Day is Games Knoppix. Games Knoppix is a version of Knoppix that is preinstalled with a lot of games. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. There are literally hundreds of games preinstalled in this distribution for you to try out. The whole image weighs in at 2.7 GB, but luckily with the LivePC Engine it can just download the parts you need so you don't have to wait for the whole thing to finish downloading.

Today's Distro of the Day is One Laptop Per Child. The OLPC project is a nonprofit project out of the MIT Media Lab to distribute $100 laptops to children throughout the world. It is designed to be extremely low power and work in remote areas without power or network. The hope is that by supplying children with laptops, "children in emerging nations will be opened to both illimitable knowledge and to their own creative and problem-solving potential."