ByzantineOS is a small LinuxDistribution focussing on Internet Appliances. While in alpha stage, it is clean, fast, and fits on a 28MB ISO by virtue of choices like using BusyBox and running X11 in a FrameBuffer?. It concentrates on the web software selection an Internet Appliance typically offers, ie a WebBrowser.
Pop the CD in, reboot, make sure you are booting off the CDROM drive, and sit back. A BootLoader screen (probably GRUB) asks for a choice of normal or hi-res (1024x768, although it doesn't say that there) FrameBuffer?s. Booting shows the usual sorts of output, although the noisy Kernel messages are hidden behind messages like configuring network card and the like. Unfortunately it fails to properly configure the interface and instead assigns a completely bogus IP address for some reason.
After booting, it leaves a prompt saying press enter to enable this console. Switching VTs shows this on at least a few other consoles. Once you log in you are presented with a shell... and no indication of what to do. RTFM reveals that you need to run startx(1). You should run dhcpd(8)? first though, so you have a DHCP-assigned IP address, or at least manually set it via ifconfig(8).
You'll find the usual window decorations (such as title bars and close buttons) are absent, even though there is is a .sawfish menu in your home directory. It looks like no WindowManager is run, which makes sense for an OS targetted towards Internet Appliances.
The system is equipped with an older Mozilla WebBrowser (whose age is of little true concern here). The browser is fairly customized in terms of menubar placement and available options.
So what to do now? Browse the web! That's about all you can do really. The system is run from a cramfs image (compressed RAM FileSystem), and any changes (like installed plugins and settings changes) are lost on reboot.
It's a cool idea. On a small machine with a nice display it could be a nifty WebBrowser OS. It seems like a good first start for web kiosk type software, though you'll probably want to change many of the default options, and saving changes to disk or network storage would be really useful. All that limits its usefulness for the living room is the awful display quality of TVs. (At least until HDTV... --JaredWigmore?)
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DanielLawson