Four Linux Live CDs, The Executive Summary

prostoalex writes "ExtremeTech published a review of 4 Linux live distributions that do not require installation and run off a CD. Knoppix, Feather Linux, Gnoppix and MEPIS Linux were researched, with Knoppix winning the competition (and Gnoppix not graded, since it's still in beta)." One more (of the seemingly infinite number of live distros) I've recently tried and been happy with is called Slax, and is what it sounds like -- a live Slackware distribution. Slax worked great with my finicky older Toshiba laptop. (However, slax.org appears to be down.)

Comments

DSL?

[crache]

Im surprised they left out Damn Small Linux (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/). It packs a complete desktop package in 50 megs. This includes:
browser
word processor
email client
picture viewer
image editor
file manager
instant messenger
spreadsheet
PDF viewer
mp3 / cdplayer
irc client
ssh clients games
sql database
web server
vncviewer
nintendo emulator..

really knoppix packs a lot of stuff, but do you need it all? 50 megs will fit on an infamous "business card cd"

Re:DSL?

[crache]

almost forgot; Dsl is small enough to load into ramdisk, eliminating the speed problems of a cd, and even outperforming your hard drive.

Morphix

[OverlordQ]

Personally I've tried Morphix and I liked it very well. You can also install it to an Hard-Drive by double clicking an icon on the desktop if you dont want to boot from cd. It's based off of Debian GNU/Linux as well as Knoppix.

There's 4 Official 'Flavors' of Morphix including:

• LiteGUI - a small, lightweight desktop, that provides things like a wordprocessor, spreadsheet, browser, email client, IM-software and media player (avi / mpeg).
• Gnome - a desktop for people that want more than the basic tools. However, there is little you can't do with this cd image (full printing support, photo-camera tools, a few games and OpenOffice to work with Word-documents, for example)
• KDE - a desktop that is between LightGUI and Gnome when it comes to the amount of tools pre-installed. Like Gnome, there is support for multiple users, but it doesn't contain OpenOffice, and hence doesn't deal with Word-documents as well.
• Game - a small lightweight desktop with only a browser and a lot of Open Source games, and one or two Free commercial demo's/games.

In addition to those 4 Official 'Flavors' there's quite a few Derivitves including ones for HAM Radio users and a MAME system.

Slax

[crache]

The poster mentions Slax, and its website being down: It is currently accessible at http://slax.linux-live.org/ but not for long..

Knoppix for nforce mobos: Kanotix

[Anonymous Coward]

http://kano.mipooh.net/kanotix/
It is made by a german Knoppix hacker named Kano, who has a big page of patches for Knoppix here:
http://www.kano.mipooh.net/
It comes with kernel 2.4.23 patched with forcedeth and XFS.
It uses grub, Xfree86 4.3, is based on Debian/sid.
ACPI and DMA enabled by default (can be disabled with acpi=off respectively nodma)

The forum (german and english):
http://kanotix.mipooh.net/index.php

Download:
http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/kanoti x/
Torrent:
http://kano.mipooh.net/kanotix/KANOT IX-X-MAS-2003- PREVIEW.iso.torrent

Damn Small Linux

[JThundley]

You've got to be careful with those mini CDs. I got a copy of Damn Small Linux on a Business Card CD stuck inside the CD-ROM drive behind the tray. This went on to break the whole CD rom drive and probably the CD.

Bittorrent knoppix link

[alt.fan.slashdot]

Before the knoppix server dies, here's the tracker for the bittorrent so everyone can download knoppix.
here for the bittorrent client.
Also, MandrakeMove torrent

Re:Where's MandrakeMove?

[yellowcord]

I do it already. With Knoppix 3.3 theres a program that will make a permanent home directory. Point it at your USB key drive at boot and you are laughing.
"knoppix home=/dev/sda1 screen=1280x1024"

If you figure out how to edit the ISO (I'm guessing loopback device) you could even get the CD to do this automatically.

Two Knoppix-based in Brazil:

[Anonymous Coward]

Kurumin and Kalango (yeah, like I was going to give the links... lamer!).

They're pretty much Knoppix adaptations, knoppix options still present and all, but an interesting fact:

Some small VARs here sell computers without OSes and they demo their computers with Kurumin, which not only eases the selling process (try telling your customer to believe the computer will work), but also require much less work, since there's no installing to do... and more importantly, no uninstalling, too!

Kinda of a frightening experience, to see Linux in TV... to M$, of course! ;-D

Linux live is ideal for laptops

[branchingfactor]

Given the high chance of hardware incompatibilities when installing linux on laptops, linux live cds are fantastic for laptops. You boot the live cd, fiddle with the options, and see if the hardware you care about works (eg., display, external display, ethernet, wireless, etc.). If not, you try another distribution. I tried knoppix, gnoppix, morphix, as well as straight debian on my ibm t40p. Only knoppix was able to get everything working. After I got it working, I installed it to the harddrive. The biggest problems with knoppix are (1) it uses kde instead of gnome and (2) it has its own package structure that is incompatible with debian. So apt-get dist-upgrade or even apt-get upgrade will break everything. I've only had success upgrading individual packages with apt.

Re:wow.

[zelbinion]

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.