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In my opinion, SLAX (http://slax.linux-live.org/ is a very good distribution, whether you want to actually give it as a Xmas present is another thing. Unfortunately people are ignorant enough that they usually don't have a clue what Linux is. Even if you're giving it to fellow geeks, they'll probably either have a favorite liveCD already or will have no need for it. It's a risky idea altogether. Anywho...possible liveCDs could be: Knoppix STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease...no jk it's the Security Tools Distribution) It's a very balanced liveCD with adequate hardware detection. I lent a copy to a net admin I know and I still haven't gotten it back XD MandrakeMove (make sure it's retail version) People above had mentioned this. It's important that the ones you give are the retail versions, the free one plain ol' sucks. Trust me. Don't even bother downloading the free one. The USB Key that comes with the retail one is kinda like an all purpose gift, so maybe that's a choice, make it a liveCD and a USB Key

This is not a jab at Linux or anything, but the only things my peers know about Linux is that it's free and it's a Unix clone. Frankly, they would be pissed if I gave them a CD with a free operating system on it and tried to pass that off as a gift. Giving a CD full of free data is rather passe, IMHO. Why not offer to install and give support for a distro or download SuSE/Mandrake/Fedora Core and include a copy of CrossoverOffice (something that, coupled with help in installation and support, might actually move some to migrate). I know this will probably get modded as a troll, but this works. I actually did migrate my father to SuSE Linux on his tablet PC for a time. It was not an easy task to get the pen input working and to get CrossoverOffice working, but he did use it as his primary desktop for a while.

As far as LiveCDs go, I've found SuSE's LiveCD and the Knoppix LiveCD to be pretty good, but the best I've found for out-of-the-box support is the Slackware run-off live distro, Slax. This is what I used for the workstations at my university for the longest time. It comes bundled with X, KDE, a ton of office-oriented applications and has great hardware compatibility. It also fits on a mini CD-R, so it can be kept in a pocket. Might want to consider sending a card with one of those inside it.

However, java itself is bloated. The freaking runtime is 20mb. If you want to be able to develop in it, don't expect much change out of 100mb. And that's without documentation, and compressed. Installed compiler and documentation, you're pushing 200mb. I can get a whole operating system, with full office suite, video playback, email, usenet, instant messaging, the works, in less than that, here.

Java is slow:
Startup time for the JVM is still slow yes. This rarely matters for a web/application server. When it comes to running, it is plenty enough.

Most of the running stuff is slow too, especially with gui. You will say this is because of swing. This is true. However, swing is touted as a *main advantage of java*, because it means the uis are consistent. So either java is hopelessly slow for anything that needs a gui, or it's just as inconsistent as c or anything else wrt guis and all those megabytes of runtime and compiler are not helpful libraries but just useless bloat. Take your pick.

It isn't open source:
So what. It's close enough.

Not for all of us. Some people are devoted debian users. Even for those of us who aren't, I personally think it's unreasonable to expect me to use a language that I am not allowed to distribute the *runtime* for, yet alone the compiler. Yes, I'm allowed to distribute a jre with a java application, but this is a special exception in the license which, to my eyes, means the license is very wrong.

I guess it's official, Linux is a real threat to Microsoft's OS dominance. Now that Balmer seems to be going out of his way to put Linux in the limelight, everyone who's been on the fence to this point should take a look and see what all of the fuss is about. Here's a link to the Knoppix to help if anyone wants to try before they buy! The Slackware based Slax is worth a look too.

Balmer's attacks certainly mean that the threat on the server is real, but it may also speak to what MS projects on the desktop. No, Linux isn't likely to take the desktop in the US, but MS is probably projecting lowered sales of Windows there too. Why? Because the PC market is reaching saturation with today's machines more than powerful enough to meet the needs of most, which means fewer new PCs will be sold. Most sales of Windows are in new PC bundles. PCs also face competition from other increasingly capable consumer electronics like cell phones, music players, and handheld game consoles. These competing devices are less expensive than a PC and much easier to use. All of this means eroding sales of Windows over the next few years. Microsoft may have been holding out hope that the growing PC market in Asian might rescue Windows, but the Chinese-Korean-Japanese joint Linux venture threatens to close that door. So Balmer is probably getting a little desperate. Personally, I think if Microsoft is to survive, it'll be Bill Gates who figures out what they need to do. I think that in the end Microsoft will have to learn to play nice with Linux just as Sun seems to be doing now.

wow. who would've thought of such an idea?
im suprised somebody hasnt already
..erm they have. http://slax.linux-live.org/
not to mention many other distros, many of which are made for just such a feat..
http://featherlinux.berlios.de/ but in all regaurds, atleast its now "cool"
to have a usb key drive, with a top 5 distro on it.
(top 5, rh, suse, mandrake, slackware, debian)

who knows where this will take us. but i invision a future where we'll all cary this little chip around,
with all our personal information in it, personal files, etc. ("big brother's dream")
so that we can be more "productive & efficent"
lord knows where the personal privacy will sease and "common good" begins.
/end rant

Now, maybe someone could create a knoppix type distro that has some super cool video game that only works on linux.

Or better yet: make it yourself

As for cool videogames, ever tried Angband? It doesn't _only_ work in linux though, so maybe this is not what you mean. Maybe Tux Racer is more to your liking :)

Slax

Slax

SuSE

Mandrake

Knoppix

these four are the main seem to be the main live disks and should give you a feel for what is out there, I've used all of these and find them all easy to use, the advantage to Knoppix and Slax are that the Live disks can be used to do a Hard disk install where the SuSE and Mandrake ones can not. If you would like to look at other distros I'd recommend looking at THIS site, as it is dedicated to giving you access to as many distos as possable.

To use these you will need to make sure that you have CD burning software that allows you to burn an ISO image, most does though some burning software likes to play hide and seek so you may have to look for it. you will also need a High speed internet connection to down load most of these.

One other option is to see if there is a Linux User Group (LUG) in your area, usually someone at these will have a live CD laying around for you to have as well as be able to offer help to you while you start out.

this is by no means a definitive list of Live CDs if anyone knows of other please add to my list with your links, thanks.

I'll tell you one where it makes a big difference: getting the newest slax iso. There are only 2 ftp sites, and, frankly, they suck, wheras with BT you can get a reasonable download speed.

Some other good Security LiveCD distros are Knoppix STD and P.H.L.A.K. But I mainly use Knoppix (which also has kismet and nmap), and when I want speed, SLAX is very good.

Q.

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There is an alternative distribution for bioinformatics. It is based on Slax (A live distro based on Slackware) and it's is called: DNALinux.
Disclaimer: I am one of the authors of DNALinux. The program is free as in GPL.

If Knoppix won't work - try Slax at http://slax.linux-live.org/

I did this once for my own personal use just before I purchased my laptop. Many distros were nice, knoppix etc had lots of stuff by default... but much of it was unused for myself.

I wanted specialized distros that had more directed applications towards network management, and security. I found myself with basically Knoppix as my swiss army knife, Slackware live (SLAX now) as my scalpel for those hard to reach places with as many gui network utils as I could find. And the packetmaster for a quick linux prompt.

I thought these ruled... it seems to me there wasn't a whole lot of research... Did they just do a search for +live +cd on freshmeat and ignore everything else? The only distro I saw remotely bloat free was feather... which I decided against because for my mini-distro I'd rather use packetmaster.

Packetmaster = awesome security tool

Slackware live (SLAX) is pretty small by default 200 megs ish, plenty of room for your own customs and it has an easy to download customizable tar.gz set of scripts.

It's not entirely down, slax.linux-live.org
Slax is by far the best live-CD I've used, keep up the good work (fits on a 20 min / 8 cm cd too).

Er, no... perhaps the site has simply Moved

Knoppix is okay, but I really like having a very usable distro on one of those 185mb cd's. The small cd's actually fit in your pocket (typically of my coat) so I can have a useable linux distro wherever I go, AND it works on old hardware (read: PC's that can't boot off of usb keys).

I don't have a laptop at work (don't travel enough to warrant the expense) but when I do travel, I usually end up having to "borrow" someone's PC when they aren't using it. This is pain to say the least. It is great to say: "hey, let me just use that old junky one in the corner." They usually respond: oh, you can't use that one, the hard drive is broken. Which is when I say "Perfect!", and they give me this very strange look....

That said, slax is the only 'small' distro I've found that includes the utilities I need:

1. dhcp
2. Web browser that supports ssl AND PROXIES!!! (most small distros use the dillo web browser, which does not support proxies. Without proxy support, I can't get outside the corporate firewall, which sort of makes it hard to read slashdot.)
3. ssh
4. multi-desktop window manager [click to focus] (yes, I started on windows, flame me...)
5. vnc viewer
6. reasonably workable xterm (konsole and rxvt are my favorites)

Also nice about slax is that is has full PCMCIA support. When I've used it on laptops (belonging to other people, of course) I've been able to use PCMCIA network cards (10/100 and some wireless cards) and it supports flash memory (so I can copy over my ssh keys). I love to have these features in one of those 50mb business card distro's, but they never seem to include a functional web browser, and do include a bunch of utilities I don't care about.

(sigh) I guess I'll have to build my own distro, if I only knew how/had the time to learn...
Until then, however, slax is the best distro I've found for what I need.

Q.

Although I haven't used it myself it is what the slax distribution was created with.

To quote from their website:
"Linux Live is a set of bash scripts which allows you to create own LiveCD from every Linux distribution. Just install your favourite distro, remove all unnecessary files (for example man pages and all other files which are not important for you) and then download and run these scripts. "

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