Giant List Of Linux-based Live CDs

nick58b writes "After searching the Internet and not being able to find a list of all available Linux Live CDs, I decided to create one. In its current form, it attempts to makes finding a Live CD easy. There are nearly 100 Live CD distributions listed so far, with functions ranging from clustering to home entertainment, and ISO image sizes from 5 to 702 Megabytes."

Comments

Hmmm.

[Ziviyr]

I guess distrowatch.com is chopped liver.

Re:Hmmm.

[Ziviyr]

I'm sorry, strong hallucinogens here.

The first post regarding distrowatch being called redundant (story didn't mention it either)?

My walls cry a torrent of blood and ... gotta go, my bookshelf is getting angry at me again.

Re:Hmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

what about the Ninnle LiveCD?

Re:Hmmm.

[Burianski11]

Not to be an ass, but I can't find a place on distrowatch.com that lists ONLY LiveCD distros. If there is one there, can somebody point me in the right direction? If there is not one, then this site is a very handy reference.

Cool

[ObviousGuy]

Thanks.

Now to go load these guys on all the computers at Best Buy!

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Great! You take Best Buy, I'll install it on all the Ataris at the Goodwill store.

Re:Cool

[124IAN]

Thats NOT a bad idea, to Best Buy I go!

Re:Cool

[value_added]

Funny, yes, but I wouldn't underestimate the promotional (and educational) value of shiny new PCs all running shiny new Linux distros.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure would like to know what Goodwill stores your finding Atari's at? I havent been able to find any the last couple of years!!

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

wait until they buy one and it doesn't work like the floor model. (aka, you get this lovely shade of blue...)

Growing Distros

[Mork29]

Well, I know that some distro's can have installs of up to 2 or 3GB (ok, alot of that is source-code), but why aren't there any live DVD's? People really haven't explored this medium for distributing data. Many programs and games have still refused to switch over to DVD, despite it's wide usage in most new computers. Why is this?

Re:Growing Distros

[sbennett]

I'd guess it's partly because a lot of the stuff on the second and thirds CDs is less frequently used. If all most people want is KDE, OpenOffice, and Mozilla, and Knoppix can fit them all on one CD, why bother with a DVD at all?

Re:Growing Distros

[Ziviyr]

My wild guess is that CDs fit alot as is, and are much cheaper, which pays off with all the revisions. And DVD burners aren't as hugely common as CD burners. (also, compressed loopback was buggy at large sizes last time I heard it was tried)

A DVD would provide a stretched-limo kind of Live CD experience though. :-)

Re:Growing Distros

[ryanw]

Cost. DVDs cost more and also bandwidth isn't free. So whether they're letting you download it off their site or they're giving them away at their booth... I believe just about everything you need should be able to fit on a 800mb disk. I think the ones that push over a few hundred megs just have stuff "because they can".

Re:Growing Distros

[lxt]

Maybe because DVDs are more expensive to produce than CDs? I'm not too sure. Then again, I do remember stuff being released on floppies for some time after CD-Rom drives had become widely available.

Re:Growing Distros

[Anonymous Coward]

One reason: there's no bootable DVD format/support.

While CD booting is now common in many Mobo BIOS, I've yet to see one that will support DVD booting. Sure, there may be some out there already that I've missed (I'll probably find out from replies that there are), but as far as I know, booting from DVD is a different kettle of fish from booting a CD...

Re:Growing Distros

[The One KEA]

I've often wondered about this as well. Considering the elevated requirements of most software packages and games written for the current top OS, you'd think that the person buying it would have a DVD drive. It sounds like a reasonable assumption for the companies to make.

Re:Growing Distros

[segment]

cost factors... Think about that. A 7.99 DVD just to burn something you can BZIP into two .49 cd's. When you're free you're going to look to cut costs. *Nix distros unlike say VxWorks, Windows, Solaris (don't be a troll and answer with *its free to download*... I'm talking on a commercial level), QNX, etc, are making money SELLING as opposed to distros which charge to cover running costs.

Pretty nice list havent used Linux for a while though. Maybe I'll find a PPC version to play with for my laptop.

Re:Growing Distros

[byolinux]

You're right, but what's to stop a GNU/Linux vendor from selling such a DVD?

It's easy for everyone to play the bandwidth argument, but the parent never suggested it was for download, just that it was available.

Re:Growing Distros

[daaan]

My Tyan motherboard boots my Debian DVD with no issues at all. None at all. DVD Images (as well as CD images of course...) are available here http://www.debian.org/CD/jigdo-cd/

Re:Growing Distros

[W2k]

$7.99 is really expensive for a DVD. Over here, even with out gross taxes on writeable media, one DVD-R sets you back about $2, much less if you buy them in bulk. CD's are about $.8, again, much less if you buy them in bulk. A typical CD stores 700 MB, a DVD-R stores 4.7GB. Any compression you can think of that could be applied to squeeze more data into a CD could be applied to the data on a DVD just the same. Just imagine how much you could fit on a single DVD if everything was heavily compressed! Any way you look at it, unless DVD media costs a lot more where you live for some reason, the cost argument is irrelevant after 1.5GB or so.

Re:Growing Distros

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow - that's kinda neat! Ta for putting me straight.

Maybe it's just a question of manufacturers needing to advertise the feature more prominently for it to really take off. I was unaware that some mobos did this, as I guess a few other people were too...

Re:Growing Distros

[Anonymous Coward]

DVDs boot just like CDs. Both my PCs will boot a dvd. Linux Format has been putting bootable dvds on their coverdisc for the past three months.

Re:Growing Distros

[W2k]

Oopsie. I put "with out" where I meant "with our". Please don't think that I meant "without". :)

Re:Growing Distros

[Threni]

> You're right, but what's to stop a GNU/Linux vendor from selling such a DVD?

I borrowed a friends SUSE 9.0, and that comes on 5 cds and a DVD containing everything. I think. I don't have a DVD reader, and to be honest I'm not going to get one until they come down in price, and so do the blanks, and so does the reliability - i've read in reviews that you can damage a DVD by just putting it on top of another DVD! Cool...

Re:Growing Distros

[blincoln]

$7.99 is really expensive for a DVD.

No kidding.

I can get 5-packs of JVC made in Japan DVD-Rs at Fred Meyer for less than $15. DVD+Rs are usually a few dollars cheaper.

Re:Growing Distros

[byolinux]

I don't think you can damage a DVD by putting it on top of another DVD. I've certain had them stacked on a spindle and had no problems.

DVD-ROM drives are pretty cheap now aren't they? Certainly here in the UK, they are. I reckon you'll find one for $40.

Re:Growing Distros

[otter42]

What I think would be really interesting would be multiple LiveCD distros on one CD! Imagine, you use the boot loader to choose between Gnoppix or Knoppix, bioinformatic or educational, vanilla or chocolate.

And, honestly, DVDs aren't at all expensive. On rebate, I bought a whole slew of DVD-R from OfficeMax (Depot?) for $5 per 25. Yeah, they're low quality, but for linux distros, the junkable ones are what you want to use.

Re:Growing Distros

[MoogMan]

This is a potential misconception from a lot of people. The problem with bootable DVDs arise because the DVD sometimes hasnt enough time to spin up in time for it to be read by the bios. My laptop will boot off a DVD, whereas my main box will not for example

Re:Growing Distros

[ComaVN]

try pressing the pause key

Re:Growing Distros

[W2k]

Interesting, it's the other way around here in Sweden. DVD+R's are usually a tad more expensive as far as I've been able to tell, and I found it hard to find places that had DVD+R's in really big bulk packages (50+ discs). I own a multi-format burner (Nec ND-1300A) but I use DVD-R's exclusively for the above reasons.

Re:Growing Distros

[Threni]

> DVD-ROM drives are pretty cheap now aren't they? Certainly here in the UK, they
> are. I reckon you'll find one for $40.

I'm in the UK! I think the price must have collapsed just after I bought a CDR. I got a LG one for 60 which was at the time one of the fastest going (although I always write as slowly as possible, which is x8 using the supplied software - Nero Express). It was a review in a UK magazine which pointed out the dangers of..uh...putting DVDs down on top of other DVDs. It was in the context of a piece about different formats, and how some had the disk inside a protective sleeve.

Re:Growing Distros

[byolinux]

Ah, sorry...

Give this a go:-

dabs.com

25 quid.

Re:Growing Distros

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, I pay $10 for 5, and I live in Canada.. DVDs are cheap thanks to no-levy!

Re:Growing Distros

[SphericalCrusher]

Haha, that's going to suck when you reformat and try to boot up into your favorite Linux distro with a DVD that your computer cannot read. I think he did a great thing, but for what it's wroth, I prefer www.linuxiso.org.

Re:Growing Distros

[ozbird]

(also, compressed loopback was buggy at large sizes last time I heard it was tried)

A Live DVD wouldn't need a compressed filesystem - 4.7GB should be enough for any Live distro. :-)

Re:Growing Distros

[Short Circuit]

I thought they used Linux's transparent decompression...

I don't think that's supported under UDF, the DVD FS.

Re:Growing Distros

[Infinite93]

For whatever reason, When I read it I thought:

"What is an 'out-gross tax'? I didn't remember that one from Economics."

Re:Growing Distros

[yacineparis.com]

Very few people have DVD burners (in the whole world)
3 GB = ~4 CDs
and CDs / CD Burners are less expensive.

Re:Growing Distros

[yacineparis.com]

Anyway, who needs a 3GB distro? I use the Gentoo liveCD (38MB) as a rescue disk. It has everything you need in it: lynx, vi, rp-pppoe, etc.

Re:Growing Distros

[axxackall]

There is no bootable DVD/UDF (I haven't find it yet). But you still can do a bootable DVD/ISO. It still limits you with 2GB (FAT inheritance).

I am looking now for the way to combine a bootable ISO partition with an additional UDF partitin on the same DVD. I think THAT would solve a problem.

Re:Growing Distros

[UFNinja]

Isn't this the purpose of things like BitTorrent though?

Re:Growing Distros

[His name cannot be s]

...I believe just about everything you need should be able to fit on a 800mb disk

I've heard this before... waitaminute...

Got It!

640K ought be enough for anybody

:p

Re:Growing Distros

[dagar]

While bandwidth is a concern, why not put torrent list for all these live cds and live dvds? A legitimate use for BitTorrent.

Re:Growing Distros

[Anonymous Coward]

Live CD? Im still booting linux from a floppy !

And we were accusing M1cro$oft of producing bloatware ! ;)

Re:Growing Distros

[elgaard]

There are Knoppix DVD's.
The LinuxTAG dvd has Knoppix on it.
I just tried a DVD from a local mag with a Knoppix image on it.

Knoppix is about 2.8 GB so an uncompressed DVD would only double the capacity.

Besides on a DVD a compressed filesystem is probably faster.

Re:Growing Distros

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

I've noticed just the opposite where I shop (BestBuy, OfficeMax, Sam's Club).

Be sure to check the quantities on those bulk packs you're comparing, because I often see a 25 pack of DVD-R right next to a 20 pack of DVD+R with similar pricing.

I'm not sure if this intentional deception on the part of the manufacturer, but it seems to be pretty common, especially at places like Sam's Club that only carry one brand of DVD recordable media.

Re:Growing Distros

[guacamolefoo]

Over here, even with out gross taxes on writeable media,

Yeah...that's pretty much what I think of taxes, too.

GF.

Re:Growing Distros

[Pikhq]

It only needs to be UDF for a DVD-Video disc. If you just want DVD ROM, you can use iso9660.

Re:Growing Distros

[sharkey]

I believe just about everything you need should be able to fit on a 800mb disk.

Yeah, right. 800 millibits = 0.8 bits = .0008 megabits = .0001 megabytes. That's pretty small.

Re:Growing Distros

[dargaud]

> What I think would be really interesting would be multiple LiveCD distros on one CD

The Ultimate boot CD contains various images of boot floppies onto a CD. Let's do the Ultimate boot DVD of various boot CDs !

Re:Growing Distros

[ClioCJS]

CDs are not cheaper.

80 minute cds are about 10-15 cents each and store 700M. That gives 46-70 megs per penny. 4X blank DVD-Rs are 61-81 cents each and store 4485M. That is 56-73 megs per penny.

Time wise, DVD 1X burning is equivalent to CD 9.2X burning, I THINK. Which means the 16X burners coming out now burn data at a cd-recorder equivalent speed of 147.2X. Thus it not only saves money, but also burning time (And also labelling time and physical cubic space.)

My facts may be incorrect in this paragraph, but NOT the last one. A 4X burner can be had, shipped, for under $100.

Re:Growing Distros

[ClioCJS]

To clarify, when I said "This paragraph", I meant paragraph #2.

And the cost I have always gotten for cds is 15 each, DVDs 61 each, which for me is 46M vs 73M per penny.

But I have not bought cds for over a year. That last batch of 1200 was it. I bought about 4000 or so and that's it. (Now, I've purchased over 600 DVD-Rs in the last year.)

To buy? Go to Pricewatch and click on media. My stated costs include shipping as discs are surprisingly heavy. I usually end up buying from AllMediaOutlet.

Re:Growing Distros

[sarastro_us]

Is DVD driver support under linux reliable enough to have this be a viable alternative to compressed CD filesystems? CD drives are ubiquitous.

Re:Growing Distros

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who needs more than 640K is a big girl's blouse

Re:Growing Distros

[LetterJ]

No doubt. I have a place locally that will put a custom color thermal image on DVD-R's and include the disc for $2.50. That's only $0.50 more than for the same service for CD-R.

Re:Growing Distros

[llefler]

And today I have no mod points. It's a cruel world.

Re:Growing Distros

[ErixTr]

My Tyan motherboard boots my Debian DVD with no issues at all.

Does kernel 2.2 support DVDs?

Re:Growing Distros

[Wolfrider]

1. DVD*R standards for burning aren't "finalized" yet - nobody knows whether to go + or -
1a. Dual-format DVD burners are only now becoming "affordable" at ~$100
( Side note - in my experience, +R / +RW format is better for computer / data-storage usage. )

2. Bandwidth costs for the ISO provider (yeah I know, BitTorrent...)

3. Lots of ppl are still on 56K dialup

4. Downloading ~4400MB, even over 1540Kb DSL, still takes *hours*

5. With compression, 700MB live-cd ISO's are already providing over 2GB of data. (Not source code.)

6. More people still have CD-burners than DVD-burners ATM.

--Conclusion: DVD downloads still aren't quite "there" yet, but wait a few months for the burner prices to come down a bit more.

--That said, I was asking myself the same question last summer, when Knoppix did their limited-edition DVD rev. ;-) Didn't have a DVD burner then, but it ran fine under Vmware 3.x.

Re:Growing Distros

[Wolfrider]

--Actually, Knoppix can be installed in only 2300MB, using Reiserfs. (At least last time I checked.)

Re:Growing Distros

[Wolfrider]

--BTW, thanks for the links.

Re:Growing Distros

[axis-techno-geek]

There is no bootable DVD/UDF (I haven't find it yet). But you still can do a bootable DVD/ISO. It still limits you with 2GB (FAT inheritance).

So the bootable Mandrake 9.1 DVD I have is just a figment of my imagination (also the 8.2 bootable DVD)? Too much spicy food last night I guess...

I have burned a single 4.37 GB file onto a DVD-R and can read it fine under Linux, windows craps out, in fact, windows (using Nero) let me burn a 4.37 GB file, but then I couldn't read the disc under windows.

Both Mandrake discs I have, have over 4 GB worth of files, great for installs ;)

Re:Growing Distros

[Wolfrider]

--My 900MHz Duron (mobo unknown, sorry) boots from DVD no prob.

Re:Growing Distros

[axxackall]

So, what type of image have you burned? ISO or UDF?

Re:Growing Distros

[Anonymous Coward]

by the time we have a need for live DVD's, DVD-/+R's will be dirt cheap.

Re:Growing Distros

[Anonymous Coward]

800mb == 800MB. The shorthand for storage units is now case insensitive. The concept of milli- or micro-{anything-discrete} doesn't make much sense anyways ;-)

Re:Growing Distros

[abertoll]

I'm of the opinion that not everyone has a DVD-ROM on their computer. CDROM is still standard, and even though DVDROM may be standard with every computer you buy today, a lot of people still have "older" computers.

In other words putting it on CD ensures everyone who has moved beyond a 486 can use it.

Re:Growing Distros

[daaan]

I have no idea. I beleive that the default kernel on the unstable build that I use is 2.4.21ish, give or take. I unfortunately am not at home right now, and can't confirm this.

Re:Growing Distros

[ElliotLee]

Can computers BOOT from DVD? And DVD ISOs are not as widespread.

Re:Growing Distros

[Anonymous Coward]

I am currently downloading a DVD image with every version of windows on it. I can't tell yet, but it is most likely bootable and comes with several utilities also. I have a CD now with every version of windows 9x up to ME. When you boot, it asks which version you want to install or you can run some utilities directly off of it like spinright, ghost, and partition magic. It's probably the most usefull CD I have.

If you want to also get a copy of the DVD and help speed up my download, click here to download with bittorrent. Just be sure to only install what you have licenses for.

Re:Growing Distros

[axis-techno-geek]

Both ISO and UDF.

Under Windows with Nero you can burn a UDF disc with a file greater than 2 GB, but windows then doesn't know WTF to do with the disc when you look at it, Linux will read it fine.

Re:Growing Distros

[axxackall]

So the bootable Mandrake 9.1 DVD I have ... I have burned a single 4.37 GB file onto a DVD-R

So, what type of image have you burned? ISO or UDF?

Both ISO and UDF.

Do you mean that the sinlge bootable 4.7GB image you used has both ISO and UDF types?

I asked the question in context of your previous comment, not in general:

What image type, ISO or UDF, have you burned when you used a single image to make a bootable Linux DVD of 4.7 GB size?

And, by the way, I didn't ask you about Windows - we talk here about Linux distros, so Windows doesn't exist at all in such a context :)

Re:Growing Distros

[Trejkaz]

Damn right. You could install "quite a lot" on a LiveDVD. For instance, you could make a LiveDVD which boots to Neverwinter Nights, a game which ordinarily runs off 2.8Gb of hard disk space.

Re:Growing Distros

[axis-techno-geek]

The bootable Mandrake DVD's are ISO Images from what I can tell (25h DVD-R book type), I copied them with Nero at the time because I didn't have an updated Linux distro on the machine that could do DVD's.

The single 4.7GB file was an encrypted container which needed to be burned as a UDF.

we talk here about Linux distros, so Windows doesn't exist at all in such a context :)

I know, I just found it humorous that Windows would let me burn the disc, but then it was unable to read it correctly, where Linux could read it fine.

Re:Growing Distros

[axxackall]

So, what I can tell from your comment, you cannot confirm that the bootable ISO image was bigger than 2GB. And you cannot confirm that the single 4.7GB UDF image was bootable, can you?

That's my point, you fail to see: the bootable (or not bootable) ISO image is limited by 2GB. UDF can be bigger than 2GB (in fact 4.7 GB), but it is not bootable.

The only way to make a bootable DVD of 4.7GB volume is to make it from two images (not the single one!): a bootable ISO image + an addition UDF image.

And leave topic of Windows alone: when we talk avout a bootable Linux DVD - we don't care if Windows can read it or not.

Re:Growing Distros

[axis-techno-geek]

So, what I can tell from your comment, you cannot confirm that the bootable ISO image was bigger than 2GB. And you cannot confirm that the single 4.7GB UDF image was bootable, can you?

I stated in my first post that both bootable discs have 4.7GB of data on them.

An ISO image file can be any size, it is only limited by the file system on the hard drive, on the disc it self, the ISO9660 format can support a single file of up to 2GB, where the UDF format can support bigger. Most DVD's are in ISO9660 format (this is why movies are broken up into files), but if you "dumped" the image to a file:

• dd if=/dev/scd0 of=movie_img.iso

The entire "image" would be one big file.

That's my point, you fail to see: the bootable (or not bootable) ISO image is limited by 2GB. UDF can be bigger than 2GB (in fact 4.7 GB), but it is not bootable.

No, the image file is limited to your hard disk file system, not the disc it is burnt to, the size of files inside the image are subject to the 2GB file size limit of the ISO9660 standard. I have yet to see a file outside of video or database that needs to be bigger than 2GB.

And leave topic of Windows alone: when we talk avout a bootable Linux DVD - we don't care if Windows can read it or not.

You should, ISO9660 is a "standard" if Windows can't read the disc, then you have failed.

Re:Growing Distros

[axxackall]

No, the image file is limited to your hard disk file system, not the disc it is burnt to, the size of files inside the image are subject to the 2GB file size limit of the ISO9660 standard. I have yet to see a file outside of video or database that needs to be bigger than 2GB.

Good point. Thanks for correcting me.

You should, ISO9660 is a "standard" if Windows can't read the disc, then you have failed.

No, I haven't. If I don't have Windows in my house then I don't have OS that cannot read a bootable Linux CD. In fact, there is no need to read such disk in Windows. All is required is that it will be readable by BIOS to boot from it. That's it.

As for "purity" of ISO9660 standard... Read 'man mkisofs' and see that if you make your disk ISO9660 compliant - it will be useless, due to its file name limitations. In fact, it will be useless for your favorite Windows, which extend it with so called 'Joliet' to workaround those limitations.

Business Card Distros

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember a friend going up to a girl in a bar, opening his wallet, pulling out a business card CD and saying "Get a load of my distro". Let's just say she wasn't interested.

Re:Business Card Distros

[mattjb0010]

I remember a friend

Right... that's why you posted anonymously.

Re:Business Card Distros

[Anonymous Coward]

That wouldn't be Damn Small Linux would it? Seriously, I use it, and it works great on older pc's. The /knoppix folder is only 50 mb or so.
New version 0.6 just out this week.
I currently use 0.5.3.1, DSL is easy to set up to place your restore tarball on the hdd. After that, you can boot without the CD, just use a boot floppy. Very fast that way. I run MozillaFirebird on mine.

Re:Business Card Distros

[Anonymous Coward]

cocK

Re:Business Card Distros

[CreatureComfort]

Yeah, but when chatting up a girl in a bar, do you REALLY want to flash your distro and admit that it's "Damn small"?

only 702 MB???

[m303]

The famous Knoppix is also available as DVD version with even more software and stuff. Dunno if it's already on the net.

Re:only 702 MB???

[axxackall]

The size of DVD images can be too big: many sites would hesitate to publish it afraiding too many people would download it and crash their sites, while many users would hesitate to download it as it's too big for their DSL lines. Ironic, isn't it?

What would be a really a help for us, DVD-/+R/RW users is to have some sort sort of "LiveDVD HOWTO" describing how to build your own LiveDVD.

It could be useful for Gentoo users to burn it with all packages required and later use on the computer without a network (yes, sill there are such sometimes). Other Linux distros can benefit as well.

Also it could be useful to create a backup LiveDVD. Later it could be used to boot and restore the failed system.

Re:only 702 MB???

[houghi]

What would be a really a help for us, DVD-/+R/RW users is to have some sort sort of "LiveDVD HOWTO" describing how to build your own LiveDVD.

Why stop at a howto? Make a program around it. The reason is that many who want a live DVD will be first timers and might be troubled by a howto and all the 'geek speak' in it.
People who realy do need it to repair things will either be able to work it out themselves, just run the program or are happy enough with a CD.

Re:only 702 MB???

[Shillo]

> The size of DVD images can be too big: many sites would hesitate to publish it afraiding too many people would download it and crash their sites, while many users would hesitate to download it as it's too big for their DSL lines.

Duh! This is exactly the problem that BitTorrent is designed to solve! :)

--

Re:only 702 MB???

[axxackall]

Now I only wish that people, who can publish images of already available LiveDVDs, would learn about BitTorrent.

Re:only 702 MB???

[DJ Jesus]

The size of DVD images can be too big: many sites would hesitate to publish it afraiding too many people would download it and crash their sites, while many users would hesitate to download it as it's too big for their DSL lines. Ironic, isn't it? I don't know about you, but On my crapy dsl (312k/128) I can download a popular cd from BT in a night. Now my friends who have 3mbit cable at their houses, they do this in a couple of hours. So, I don't really know what you are talking about as far as a DVD ISO being too big.

Re:only 702 MB???

[axxackall]

I've got 3Mbit/s AND 20GB cap - so I can download only 5 DVD images without hurting my budget. People with 10GB cap barely can download 3 DVD images.

Re:only 702 MB???

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the problem that Slashdot is designed to exploit.

Re:only 702 MB???

[DJ Jesus]

What service are you on with a 20GB cap? I mean, i download at LEAST 100 gigs a month.

Re:only 702 MB???

[RedBear]

> The size of DVD images can be too big: many sites would hesitate to publish it afraiding too many people would download it and crash their sites, while many users would hesitate to download it as it's too big for their DSL lines.

Duh! This is exactly the problem that BitTorrent is designed to solve! :)

You mean to say BitTorrent makes my DSL line faster? No? I didn't think so. BitTorrent only really solves the problem for the uploaders, not the downloaders.

Besides which, I've had a fair share of BitTorrent downloads that downloaded 3MB or less over a 24-hour period. It's great for the initial burst of distributed downloading but once most of the hosts get completed and drop off the network it becomes almost useless. If you don't catch it in the first couple of days it seems to be pretty worthless.

Somebody ought to come up with something to bridge between using BitTorrent hosts for the initial burst and gradually switching over to regular FTP downloads as most of the hosts drop off the network. Or what if the FTP servers actually ran BitTorrent themselves so the downloading would always be distributed between all the different mirrors. Sounds like a good idea. I would assume that they do this if the BitTorrent performance wasn't always so abysmal after the first couple of days.

I would personally really hesitate to download a DVD image by any method unless I had a (very expensive) fat pipe to download on.

Re:only 702 MB???

[jusdisgi]

I pity your provider; that amount of bandwidth is costing them way more than you are paying. Contractual limits on usage are the only reasonable interim model, and will have to do until people get comfortable/knowledgable enough about broadband to pay for it like they pay for electricity...by the [bit|watt].

Thanks!

[ryanw]

Thank you for your efforts! To repay you we will saturate your bandwidth and overload your server.

Re:Thanks!

[seanvaandering]

Thank you for your efforts! To repay you we will saturate your bandwidth and overload your server.

Probably not, considering this post happened at around 4 am CST. And by the time is 10 am CST it'll be a the bottom or of fallen off by then, so I think hes safe - for now :)

Re:Thanks!

[krumms]

To repay you we will saturate your bandwidth and overload your server.

I, for one, welcome our new bandwidth saturating server overload.

Re:Thanks!

[Jackdaw Rookery]

Replying to my own post, how tragic, apologies.

Anyway I know this all depends on whether the particular mod laughed or not but this was an attempted funny, -1 Attempted Funny?

I knew I should have rolled out an In Russia or Beowulf gag. As I read in someone's sig 'Slashdot, News for Herds. Stuff that splatters.'

Re:Thanks!

[Perky_Goth]

-1, unfunny ;)

We dont need more LiveCDs!

[Anonymous Coward]

If a see once more YALCD on Freshmeat or Distrowatch I am shove my CD-RW drive up the author's ass! (and run the eject command in the process)

There are too many of them, the more there are, the more fragmented they become and therefore less tested, resulting loads of crap cds with poor hardware dectection, buggy apps and does not bode well for Live CDs.

So if you want to make one, DON'T, help fix the bugs on the major ones, such as Knoppix and MandrakeMove, and let the other ones die unless they have a Good Reason to exisit (such as ClusterKnoppix or Knoppmyth) rather than just being a YALCD (Such as Mepis and Gnoppix)

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[Ziviyr]

MEPIS is an installer disc that boots live. It puts up a nice install with yawn inspiring ease.

I have yet to understand why the kludge that is the Knoppix install is regarded so highly.

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ive found damnsmall linux {damnsmalllinux.org} to be really handy, and mostly bug- less. Which considering there are very few people working on it, speaks well for live cds, and knoppix hacks.

Leave natural selection to work its magic.

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, this is just a variant of the old "get your priorities straight" troll. If I want to create a live cd to fit my purposes I will do so, and make it available to other if I wish. Open Source developers don't cater to your whishes...

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[kinnell]

So if you want to make one, DON'T, help fix the bugs on the major ones

You seem to think it is your place to tell me how I should spend my free time. Does this mean you are prepared to pay me to work on Knoppix or MandrakeMove?

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[torpor]

Rubbish. Live CD's represent a solution to a problem which has plagued this industry for years. (*cough*Microsoft*cough*)

It is *GOOD* to have so many to choose from ... and its good for there to be a thriving 'cottage industry' around building these LiveCD images.

I would like to see a live Boot CD build system which allows you to customize the payload *easily* (easier than it is to actually 'install' something on a local dedicated machine, individually, and administer it, anyway) and use the Read-Only aspect of the Operating System/Applications binaries to full advantage in securing a productive machine and network.

Imagine: you have 20 PC's, all booting from a Live CD which is configured to give all users the tools they need, and can then join the remaining no longer OS-centric hard disks all together in a large, local, p2p network filesystem.

New "graphics" guy comes onboard - give him the "GIMP CD Toolkit" CD, point him in the direction of any machine he wants, and away he goes. No more local PC administration. New 'sales' guy comes onboard, give him the "Office CD Toolkit" and away he goes. All the disks can then be joined together over p2p, and nobody ever has to worry about where their files are stored, or which PC to use, or what the security of an individual node is going to be if someone gets access to it - since a node would be OS-less, and the filesystem dedicated to the p2p fileshare, which would presumably be secure ... on the order of a local 'FreeNet' or what-have-you ...

I can see that Live Boot CD's are a solution to so many problems... as long as they get easier and easier to make, build, and use ...

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[Wudbaer]

Welcome to slow computer country. Live CDs like Knoppix are great, especially for demo purposes or as a rescue disk, but they are not exactly fast, especially if you are starting larger programs. And have fun once the graphics guy wants/needs to use some software that is only on the Office CD and vice versa.

Regarding security: Sure, the files on the CDs are imutable, but one would still be able to access the real valuable stuff which is your users' data if the machine is running some service that is vulnerable. And fixing security problems would mean re-creating and burning loads of new CDs.

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[torpor]

Live CDs like Knoppix are great, especially for demo purposes or as a rescue disk, but they are not exactly fast, especially if you are starting larger programs.

This will change, and in fact I'd say that for the majority of PC users out there with a 48x CD-ROM drive, its quite feasible that they'll never even notice the difference. Its not hard to make a very fast LiveBoot CD ... just RAM-exhaustive.

As for security, if there is no boot operating system on a system, and if the hard drive only contains a node image for a FreeNet/torrent-style p2p networked storage resource, particularly if that disk is encrypted (as many FreeNet node disks are), I don't see the problem.

My experience with things like the ROCK build system have lent me to the conclusion that in fact, computing is turning itself inside out. Finally! :)

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[Anonymous Coward]

; -- phonk is all you need.

really? 'cuz i'm pretty sure a closing /i tag is all You need.

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[bmsleight]

I would like to see a live Boot CD build system which allows you to customize the payload *easily* (easier than it is to actually 'install' something on a local dedicated machine, individually, and administer it, anyway)

This is just what Morphix allows you to do. It basically takes away the hard work of re-mastering a Knoppix CD.

The base, the Knoppix part contains the kernel, kernel modules, hardware detection, etc. This base is left untouched. You can either a change a mainmod or add lots of minimodules.

The are four basic images to start off with. So making you own LiveCD is much easier.

Brendan

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[torpor]

i do that so much i no longer worry about it ... but thanks for caring.

(actually whats needed is a bigger Preview button...)

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[henele]

I can see that Live Boot CD's are a solution to so many problems

Also consider tech like NetBoot solutions to these problems (with the advantage of having single images on hard drives to alter rather than dozens of CDs)...

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[byolinux]

That page is full of broken links, and it's a little old.

http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/netboot.html works for me.

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[byolinux]

In Soviet Russia, Free Software caters for your whishes, Moneypenny!

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[silicon not in the v]

Welcome to slow computer country. Live CDs like Knoppix are great, especially for demo purposes or as a rescue disk, but they are not exactly fast, especially if you are starting larger programs.

I have a story about this one. I have a mostly-working Debian install (except my sound card), but I was running from a Knoppix CD to see if it could configure my sound card and then maybe I would be able to find out what drivers to set up for my real hard drive install. My wife came into the room, on the phone with her dad, and asked if I could pull up a web browser to find a page she wanted to tell her dad about. I answered, "Well, uh, OK." I clicked to open Mozilla, and as it chugged and chugged (300MHz machine with 192MB RAM) she tried to explain to her dad why it was taking so long.
"He's using Linux...It's another operating system that tries to copy what Windows does, but generally only computer-people use it because you have to write your own programs for it."
At this point, my Mozilla window came up, but the graphics were really distorted because Knoppix hadn't set up the S3 driver for my video card, so it was using vesa or fbdev. It was pretty much unreadable.
"Well, it's really slow, and most of the time stuff doesn't work...[to me:]Why do people use it anyway?"
I just said that I was a little too upset to answer right now. Later, we discussed why I was so upset about it. I told her that I was running the version from CD to diagnose something, so it's naturally slower and not as good as it's supposed to be. I said that it's like she had come up to someone who has a flat tire by the side of the road, and she asks for a ride. The person may say OK to try to be nice and help out, but while you're riding along, you're complaining about how this car has terrible ride quality and doesn't corner well and is really bumpy.
I am trying to learn to use Linux, but it has been a slow-going experience because I am doing it on our secondary computer that doesn't have great hardware. Even Windows doesn't auto-detect my ISA sound card, but it comes with a driver disk that makes it work. I could go spend the $20 each for a new video card and new sound card, but I figure I would like to learn more about how to overcome problems like this and how to search for answers to this stuff online.

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[parkanoid]

I'm afraid the "graphics guy" isn't going to like having to work with a toolkit designed by IT people, and running from a CD. I know several graphic designer-type folks, and they usually have gigabytes upon gigabytes of filters, stock photos, textures, what have you, plus lots of obscure apps.
Of course, you could just store that on the distributed network, but what's the point of having a CD at all in that case?

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[torpor]

Duh, this is a self-defeating 'hypothesis' if ever I saw one. What's the point of making a 'hypothesis' if its only going to serve to defeat itself?

If the IT guy is doing his job making the "Graphics Guy" CD then it will have everything on it that the graphics guy needs ... if he isn't doing his job, then it won't.

Simple.

The point of having the CD is - Absolutey Zero Installable Sofware That Isn't Approved. This is a fundamental holy grail for IT departments.

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[parkanoid]

My point is that the CD probably won't have all the necessary (and up to date!) software, be it due to space limitations or lack of customization for the graphics guy's specific task. If it does, all the better, but chances are it won't. Then again, maybe my friends just have bad IT people working with them.

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[torpor]

Why won't it? If the graphics guy tells the IT guy what he needs to do his job, I don't see why a competent IT guy can't put it all on the CD as needed, and leave it at that?

You're saying 'it just wont' but not giving any reasoning other than 'thats the way things are' ... but, in a hypothetical discussion with abstract idealism, things are the way we think they are.

Frankly, I think its possible to have a scenario where staff have their CD's, they use them to get work done, and that's all there is to it. Maybe there are monthly updates or regular 'fixes' as needed - but at least in this case all that is required is a new CD be burnt ... not some massive administration of a computer system sitting on someones desk.

I'm proposing a completely transparent hardware abstraction through the use of Live CD's, something I guess nobody understood. How cool would it be to have all the disks joined in a CD-booted network into some sort of p2p-like filesystem ...

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[parkanoid]

I understand the concept, and I am not doubting its coolness; If I remember correctly, NeXT had a similar philosophy with MO discs.
I am, however, doubting the practicality of using small, standardized (If I understand correctly) and read-only media for graphic designers and similar creative types. In my (rather limited) experience, graphics people tend to have a far more varied and sizable toolkit than your average coder or accountant. Then again, maybe I have misunderstood your original post, as you seem to suggest per-user customization.

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[torpor]

NeXT had a similar philosophy with MO discs.

Well, I think Jobs just wanted to make some sort of banal point, and 'upgrade the floppy', which flopped. NeXT had nice media-based homedir config though if I remember correctly, which meant you could just buy a single disk and work from it. It was a real student machine...

The difference is, though, that I'm proposing that the role of the hard disk, internally, be no longer relegated to that of 'hosting an operating system' - in other words, the entire thing is just a big media-store. If that media store was then part of a p2p networking scheme that had a degree of redundancy, then you could turn a PC farm of 40 or so workstations into an extremely solid and stable computing -system- ...

All the 'verbage' is on the CD (Apps), and the data is stored in a p2p 'cloud', redundant, which grows/expands as you add/subtract machines ...

Anyway, I guess I'll think about this some more and find other places to discuss this... ')

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[parkanoid]

Ah, I thought I remembered reading that NeXT actually had the 'verbage', as you put it, on the CD as well, rather than just the homedir. My mistake.

As for the storage 'cloud' are you proposing something similar to Andrew FS or something with a greater degree of distribution/redundancy?

Re:We dont need more LiveCDs!

[torpor]

I think that you could do that with NeXT - put the apps anywhere you wanted to, of course - but the point was more that there was still an "OS disk" inside the machine.

My idea is that, with the OS and apps on a customized, bootable CD, the machine itself is -dead- and empty. The internal disk has an encrypted portion of the p2p'ized filesystem on it - not an entire copy, just distributed packets of the bigger sphere, like with the way FreeNet nodes never contain complete copies of the files they're storing, there's redundancy, and therefore take away a node and the 'net filesystem' reacts accordingly. Add a machine, and all you're doing is 'beefing up' the redundancy of the whole network, not adding a node with its own unique signature liabilities.

I don't recall much about the Andrew FS, which I haven't really played with since '94, but I'm thinking more of 'distributed p2p, load-balanced, data-redundant' style filesystems on a local level ...

Re:that's terrible!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Among others, the version "Linux with infringed SCO code" is worth testing. Though, a subpoena nay be coming your way in the near future.

Re:that's terrible!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had read the bottom of the page, you would find this!

Know of one not on the list? Have comments/complaints? Send me an email.

So send him the list of these mysterious CDs, if there is over a 100 live cds, with more being created every day, of course theres going to be some missing!

Re:Sorting the Distros

[byolinux]

I, for one, welcome our AC Beowulf overlords.

(I've just found out about freecache.org - does this mean that http://freecache.org/http://www.frozentech.com/con tent/livecd.php should help if/when this guy gets /.d?)

Bioinformatics

[mattjb0010]

Interesting that there are two bioinformatics-tailored liveCDs. Now I can BLAST into my work at a remote PC in an instant :)

Forgot Finnix!

[Frogking]

http://www.finnix.org/

Yes, it's outdated but I know the guy who created it and he's pretty cool.

Re:Forgot Finnix!

[jointm1k]

And he's forgotten Openwall Linux too. It is not the prettiest LiveCD, but it allows you to do most things in order to recover from disasters. And to install Owl ofcourse ;)

Re:Forgot Finnix!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also Kalango (www.kalango.org), based on Kurumin, based on Knoppix...

Re:Forgot Finnix!

[AbbyNormal]

That was informative? Huh.

Okay, I now know the guy, that knew the guy who created Finnix.

newbie to the live disc thing

[thepyre]

This might be a stupid question, but has anyone put out a live cd for a playstation 2 or xbox? I would love to run some form of *nix on my console, as it's probably the fastest computer I own.

Re:newbie to the live disc thing

[Anonymous Coward]

This might be a stupid question, but has anyone put out a live cd for a playstation 2 or xbox? I would love to run some form of *nix on my console, as it's probably the fastest computer I own.

There is a build of Gentoo called GentooX available that works great on a chipped Xbox. You might be able to rig it up with a saved-game bug, but I've only done it with a chip in my box. Here's their homepage:

http://gentoox.shallax.com/

You should be able to find the download links on their webpage. Its only a 100-150MB file, but it uncompresses to about 2GB (huge rootfs file). Just make sure that if you install it on your Xbox, you put it in the root directory on the E drive. I got it setup easily on my box and it runs great. I don't have a USB Mouse or Keyboard rigged up on my Xbox so I was only able to SSH to it from my PC. I noticed another poster mentioned how slow it was, but maybe it was something with their distro, because I had no problems at all with speed. I even setup SETI@Home on it and ran that for a few days. The time it took to finish a packet were comparible to a Pentium III 500MHz, which sounds about right since I believe the CPU in the XBox is a Celeron 733MHz. I also had no noticable slow downs on it while running applications. I definately recommend trying it out if you want to put Linux on your Xbox.

More than half based on Knoppix

[eadz]

Over half of these 100 "Distros" are Knoppix remasters. Here's a list of 60+ Knoppix remasters. The reason there are so many? It's very easy to make your own Knoppix remaster. I'm pretty sure many of these distros have 5 users if the're lucky.

Re:More than half based on Knoppix

[Ziviyr]

Medialinux sounds really cool, I'm dying to play with it, and if its any good, I hope many people try it, if just to see what programs work for them.

Re:More than half based on Knoppix

[gosand]

Over half of these 100 "Distros" are Knoppix remasters. Here's a list of 60+ Knoppix remasters. The reason there are so many? It's very easy to make your own Knoppix remaster. I'm pretty sure many of these distros have 5 users if the're lucky.

I don't know. I created a version, have it on my home server (which is why I am not linking it here) and I have people downloading it all the time. I would link to my mirror, but it disappeared a while ago. (anyone have 200 MB of space and a big pipe?) It is a bootable Quake MegaTF server. Not Q3, the old-school version. It is text only, because it just has the server on it. I have been meaning to include a light-gui, and the clients as well, but haven't gotten around to it. But I know more than 5 people have downloaded my ISO, and I am not even on any of these lists. But I have been in contact with people who have used it, and have had LAN parties with it.

Re:More than half based on Knoppix

[jbardell]

Heh. It seems to be linked to right below your username ;)

Re:More than half based on Knoppix

[gosand]

Heh. It seems to be linked to right below your username ;)

Awwwww...... shit. All it takes is one person to download it to throttle the crap out of my DSL line. Maybe some generous soul will see the smoking remains of my webserver and offer up some mirror space. :-)

Missing Primary Function Category

[wan-fu]

Awesome job with the compilation of a large list of Live Linux distros. However, I think you're missing out on a primary function: porn. I mean, c'mon, having a live CD means no history to keep on hard disk!

Re:Missing Primary Function Category

[Anonymous Coward]

You can always use the konqueror or mozilla of **any** knoppix version/subversion/remaster, you insensitive clod! ^_^

Re:Missing Primary Function Category

[seanvaandering]

I think you're missing out on a primary function: porn.

Hey! Look! No hard drive!

Re:Missing Primary Function Category

[Ziviyr]

Hmmm, any live CDs based around porn-get yet?

Re:Missing Primary Function Category

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome job with the compilation of a large list of Live Linux distros. However, I think you're missing out on a primary function: porn. I mean, c'mon, having a live CD means no history to keep on hard disk!

C'mon, about any linux browser can easily erase the browsing history. Or you can put the .mozilla directory on a ramdisk or shm.

Re:Missing Primary Function Category

[Anonymous Coward]

That's hardly the point. If someone was to use a liveCD then their is no evidence of whatever the person was looking at. Without any actual hard evidence what do you convict on? IP address are forgeable and that alone isn't enough to prove anything.

Re:Missing Primary Function Category

[Ziviyr]

I really don't understand why this is a troll.

If it were Score:0, Funny then I wouldn't mind so much. I think someone has gotten good at trolling me through mod points...

LinuXbox

[Anonymous Coward]

Does any of these boot on Xbox???

I checked out teh one called Plan-B. Sounds pretty cool.

[quote]Plan-B is a bootable Linux environment without the need for a hard drive, it runs entirely in ram or from the cd, based on a basic, stripped installation of Red Hat Linux and the fundamental workings of the SuperRescue CD. A list of tools and utilities are also included for projects such as: * Forensics/Data Recovery * System/Network Analysis and Security Scanning * Temporary Network Device/Server * IDS / NIDS System * Network Status Report Creation

Re:LinuXbox

[dfn_deux]

Dynebolic will boot on an Xbox.... I might be mistaken, but I believe that all the kernel hacking bits to make linux work on Xbox have been accepted into the main 2.6 tree so the next generation of live CDs should theoretically all be Xbox compatible.

Re:LinuXbox

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, but maybe you could do some remote gaming. There is the MS Terminal Server Client:

http://www.pilotlinux.nl/

This should make Bill nervous. It's a real cheap / flexible way to have some extra terminals in a MS Windows shop.

More than half based on Knoppix-"minority" report.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what Knoppix remaster would you like to see then?

Why I passed on MEPIS

[muyuubyou]

1) I had knoppix and to make a HD install is simple enough even for my mom with only minor instruction. Quick, easy and functional and I know it. I knew and had installed Debian before but it's not that because my peeps didn't and they could get it installed.

2) MEPIS website. Sucks bigtime. They list 7 different ways to buy it but not a single way to download it. FAQ doesn't stand for "how to buy it" or "questions I'd love to be asked." After 15 minutes trying to find an FTP download and failing miserably I gave up. Because Knoppix worked anyway and has real support in their and other's page. If I'm kind enough to dedicate my time to trying their distribution out despite having several working alternatives I already know, they should at least don't piss me off with their bullshit.

Re:Why I passed on MEPIS

[Ziviyr]

Sorry you got snagged at the website. It is available though, and real smooth install wise once you have the iso/CD.

Its understandable from the MEPIS point of view, if its easier to buy it than to find it on the site, they get more funding. If you're strapped for cash its nice that it's available if you're willing to look for it.

You seem to fit in caterory three, you won't pay for it, you're not worried enough to give it a good hard look and you have an alternative that you're happy enough with.

For those discontented few with little inclination to pay...
Heres where to get the CD images.

Re:Why I passed on MEPIS

[complex]

score anotoher one for mepis. we used it at work when knoppix was locking up at the hardware detection phase when installing on a inspiron 5150. mepsi installed fine, and had qtparted, which we needed to resize the ntfs partition.

Re:Why I passed on MEPIS

[bogie]

"For those discontented few with little inclination to pay..."

What are you talking about? Discontented few? Try overwhelming vast majority. LiveCD's are a dime a dozen. There are plently around which do the same thing as MEPIS. They are easy to setup and easy to install to the hard drive.

I'd say he fits in category one. He looked at it, saw the same thing he's seen with other LiveCD's, and was put off by the Real Networks "hide the Free version" ploy.

I'm sure MEPHIS is a quality LiveCD. I'm sure that those who paid for it are happy. I'm also sure that it suffers from that fact that 50 other LiveCD's can do the same thing for Free.

Re:Why I passed on MEPIS

[Wolfrider]

--Get yer Mepis here:
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributio ns/mepi s/mepis-2003.10.02.cd1.iso
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/ pub/linux/distributions/mepi s/mepis-2003.10.02.cd2.iso

--There *was* a Torrent at one time, but It's dead ATM.

--Also see:
http://www.mepis.org/book/view/1462

Re:Why I passed on MEPIS

[mcubed]

2) MEPIS website. Sucks bigtime. They list 7 different ways to buy it but not a single way to download it.

I'm kinda depressed about the direction MEPIS development seems to be headed, at least based upon the issues with the website you noted. MEPIS was the first Linux distro I installed on my computer, and the reason I used that one was because it was so easy to try. Unlike Knoppix and most of the other live CD distros, it wasn't pitched as primarily a "live CD distro," it was pitched as a live CD/installable hybrid distro. As such, I think it is fairly unique -- yes, I know many other live CD distros can be installed with varying degrees of difficulty, but I haven't seen one yet that is as easily or explicitly designed to run from either a CD or a HD. For a newbie like me, it was just what the doctor ordered, and I liked it so much that I did register it after only a few days of playing around with it, for the commanding sum of $10 (which was all that was suggested at the time). Never have I been happier with a purchase.

But if I were a first-time visitor to the website in its current incarnation, I'd probably pass MEPIS right by without even trying it, mainly because it is so difficult to find the downloads now, and because of the off-putting purchase "tiers." It appears that Warren can't decide if he really wants it to be available for free download or not; frankly, I have less respect for that kind of dithering than I do for those developers who are very clear up-front that their distros (Libranet, Lindows, etc.) are for sale only.

I'm glad I found MEPIS when I did, and I disagree that it's JALCDD -- but I hope it's not shooting itself in the foot.

Michael

Dynebolic

[IroNick]

I've tried dyne:bolic or here for my xbox. It works, but the version I tried was sadly slow. Seems like 32MB RAM isn't what this distro calls a good time. And of course: It requires your xbox to chipped and ready.

Re:Dynebolic

[IroNick]

Actually, the xbox has 64 MB of RAM, but it *felt* more like 32. The distro worked very smooth on my 800Mhz PC with 300-and-something MB RAM.

Re:Sorting the Distros

[Albanach]

does this mean that http://freecache.org/http://www.frozentech.com/con tent/livecd.php should help

From the Freecache FAQ:

What files are being served by FreeCache?

FreeCache can only serve files that are on a web site. If the link to a file on that web site goes away, so will the file in the FreeCaches. Also, there is a minimum size requirement. We don't bother with files smaller than 5MB, as the saved bandwidth does not outweight the protocol overhead in those cases.

So if he were hosting the distros, rather than links to the distros it would help. As it is, his page is way too small for freecache to get involved.

We dont need more LiveCDs!-One CD to rule them all

[Anonymous Coward]

And you'll get the same answer that you got during the desktop discussions, or the multiple distro discussions. Because we can.

crashrecovery.org

[mobius_stripper]

I've been using CDs from Crash Recovery Kit for Linux for a while, for both crash recovery (obviously), and for quickly booting up Linux on assorted machines for debugging, network connectivity or other tasks.

Krishna

Wifi out of the box

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know if any of these distros have wifi support out of the box? I tried knoppix (3.2? It wasn't the latest by any means) on a wifi equipped sony laptop but it didn't see the network.

I really want to hijack my wife's laptop as it's by FAR the fastest thing in the house, to do distcc compiles for my EPIA box - which is pretty slow at compiling. I could plug it into the network, but I'd much rather do it by wifi.

Re:Wifi out of the box

[pinguirico]

Knoppix supports wifi out of the box. At least some wifi. Knoppix 3.1 and 3.2 to recoginze my wifi card (an old school PCMCIA Aironet 340). However I did have to downgrade my card firmware to get knoppix to see it, though I believe that was a 2.4 kernel limitation, not a knoppix limitation.

Re:Wifi out of the box

[Anonymous Coward]

WarLinux 0.5

Re:Wifi out of the box

[JediTrainer]

That's funny. If you mispronounce wifi a bit...

You want to hijack your wifey's laptop so that you can see the wifey network :)

Live CD for older machine?

[slabrum]

I am looking for a live CD to run on a PII with 64megs of RAM. If there isn't any out there, I guess I have to do it myself.

Re:Live CD for older machine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ive used damnsmalllinux.org on a pentium two before. It gives a basic desktop functionality, with a browser, word processor, xmms and a whole bunch of other stuff. Saying that you could probably go for something a little heavier on a pentium 2.

Re:Live CD for older machine?

[Louis Guerin]

Knoppix in runlevel 2 - text only mode.

If you get 128 or more ram, you'll be able to manage, though. I've run plenty on pII233/128.

L

Re:Live CD for older machine?

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is a hard drive present, Knoppix will offer to use it as a pagefile to make up for the lack of ram.

Re:Live CD for older machine?

[Anonymous Coward]

try damnsmalllinux at damnsmalllinux.org - 50 mb and it is possible to install it to hd. got it working on an ibm thinkpad 600 233mhz and 128mb ram or so. runs perfectly from hd.

Re:Live CD for older machine?

[gmuslera]

There are a lot with low hardware requeriments. Of the few I tried, Damn Small Linux should work with fewer resources even, and Morphix Light should work also, and is more comfortable for end users.

Re:Live CD for older machine?

[Wolfrider]

--Mepis will *run* in 64MB, albeit with a "press-any-key" warning at bootup. However:

1. Make sure you have at least 256MB of swap partition
2. DON'T run KDE. It's a resource-hog. Use alt.lightweight WM like IceWM or something. You can do this by passing a kernel parm at boot: prompt.

3. UPGRADE YOUR RAM. Unless it's physically impossible, like hardwired laptop chips or something, it's long overdue!

Re:Live CD for older machine?

[slabrum]

Even worse, it is not my machine and it only has Win98 on a small HD running, no swap and no messing with the partition table.
I am thinking of a customized Knoppix without all "fat" programs like KDE, Mozilla on it. Some people used to work on these machines with Linux back in the days, right? So there must be useful thin and graphical programs out there to customize a live CD. Opera should do fine as a browser, I think. Email: sylpheed perhaps, XFCE as desktop and so on.

Bootable DVD?

[News for nerds]

There should be over 700 MB Live DVDs.

Re:Bootable DVD?

[Ziviyr]

Every Tuesday it should rain parachuted bricks of gold in my back yard.

I'm not sure much is stopping you from making a Live DVD now.

It's a great list

[WegianWarrior]

Particulary if you, like me, are just poking into this Linux thing and want to test several different versions without having to invest in a sexond harddisk or get rid of my still fully working Windowns installation. I'll definitly be spending using a lot of my bandwidth to download some distros this weekend *smiles*

What I miss, however, is beeing able to see what minimum hardware requirement the various LiveCDs need without having to look at each one that looks interesting. Can't have everything I guess.

Re:It's a great list

[Anonymous Coward]

You can partition a single drive into several logical drives without losing your Windows install.

Part of the MS advantage is that they also make people put one huge partition which is ridiculous. I make a minimum of 4 partitions on large disks, because it's more efficient. Windows, Photos, Music, Movies are the current four I have.

Re:It's a great list

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be GNU here.

Think "applications"

[heironymouscoward]

To answer the 'why more distro' trolls, hundreds of LiveCDs does not mean thousands of Knoppix/Gnoppix clones.

It means hundreds of applications, each specialized for a particular niche, each provided in an ultimately convenient format: plug and play.

It's a lot like console computing: plug in a cartridge and play. It's so different from the "traditional" computing model where software is carefully installed into an environment...

I've always believed that the need to install software was one of the biggest handicaps with delivering software to a global public.

LiveCDs eliminate this problem. We are coming back to the 1980's when home computers booted clean and software came on cartridges. Robust, stable, cheap. Look at some of the advantages from the home user's point of view:

- no installation
- total separation of data (on some kind of memory stick?) and code
- unstable system? reboot it!
- many people can share the same hardware with no interference
- you can use any available box to run the software

Conclusion: LiveCDs are not some esoteric hack. They represent a fundamental change in the home computer paradigm, and will open the door to a huge new public that still faces computers with trepidation (and after that Windows XP virus disaster that wiped their snapshots for the third time), and some trauma.

If I was a computer manufacturer, I'd be looking at designs optimized for this way of working:

- small, silent case
- optimised for game playing
- large amount of RAM (2Gb+)
- no hard disk
- easy-access USB memory sticks
- very fast CDROM/DVDRW
- no diskette
- network, TV out, 5.1 sound, etc.

And then distribute it with a pack of 20 or so interesting Linux LiveCDs including Mythtv.

Re:Think "applications"

[wan-fu]

Pretty cool idea at the end there about building a console system for PC that uses Live CDs to power it. However, the lack of a hard disk in your specs doesn't work too well when:
- the console is used to web surf or check e-mail, some local storage may be required
- games typically have large saves on the order of several megabytes, USB memory wouldn't be practical
- why bother with a fast burner, there's no media to burn... I can't even d/l a new distro to disk.
- mods/new maps/etc. to games? Where will these go?
Those are just some problems of not having a hard disk and probably apply to the next generation Xbox (and why it should keep the hard disk).

Re:Think "applications"

[heironymouscoward]

Surfing the web:
- cache pages on a RAM disk and then throw them away
- no cookies
- no history, no embarassment.
- bookmarks saved in home directory on USB disk

Game saves:
- they're large because disk space is cheap. Easy to be more efficient and compress the data
- for multiplayer games, save on a server

Media burner:
- download new distros to RAM disk, then burn onto CDR or DVDR
- download photos from camera, burn immediately to CD
- download other stuff, burn immediately to CD
- requires lots of RAM but that is not an issue

Why no hard disk? Because permanent shared storage breaks the "console" model and will inevitably be used by software providers in the wrong way. Plus it makes noise, creates more cooling issues, and forces the case to be larger.

Example: you've saved your game and now you want to go play on another machine... how do you do it?

But... it's not a big deal: such boxes should be easily modded to included whatever hardware people want. Just not for the mass market.

Re:Think "applications"

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard disk for surfing and email and games?

Downloading email is shitty anyhow.

Web mail works well for walk-up-and-use while the ideal for professionals is IMAP.

For surfing, you really don't need local storage except temporarily. Look at cybercafes. Work very well.

Mods/new maps? If small, on a portable personal data drive (flash, I guess). If large, reburn a CD.

Re:Think "applications"

[Anonymous Coward]

> - no history, no embarassment.

You know, history is actually a feature if you're not surfing porn...

Re:Think "applications"

[TrancePhreak]

I think you miss the point here. Gaming requires large installs these days, 2GB and upwards. Where will one install these games? Some save games are large because they store a lot of data, Black & White for example. If you look at game saves for consoles, there are some games with complex data that requires a large amount of space. Some games require their own memory card even.

2GB would not allow you to download a new DVD distro to ram disk. What's more, you probably couldn't do a lot of stuff while downloading, because you'd need to keep the ram open for the download. Hard drives are cheaper than RAM, and that should be taken advantage of. $156 USD for 1GB of RAM, or $120 for 120GB hard disk.

Re:Think "applications"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if more applications were designed to have all they need to run into ONE folder instead of spreading hundreds of little files everywhere in the system you would have a kind of "plug and play" for your softwares...

That's what Apple is trying to do with their application system(one app = one folder = one icon for the basic user), and the distribution of application on disk images goes in the same direction : you mount your application image and you can run it straight away, if you want to run it wihout mounting the disk you just drag and drop the program icon somewhere on the disk and that's all...

Some apps on win and linux behave the same way, i think it's a great concept that should be more generalized for desktops (as a simple user I really find unmanageable the "let's write everything in the registry" or "let's put some in /etc, some in /bin and some in /var" approaches...)

Re:Think "applications"

[son_of_asdf]

I think that you raise some interesting points here, particularly that the need to install software is a handicap. However, considering that most of these live CD distributions require a fair amount of fiddling to get them working properly on many machines (XFree86 setup, sometimes passing along peculiar kernel params, etc.) I also think that this paradigm has a way to go, rather like desktop linux itself. By the same token, on a standardized platform this sort of distribution method could be wickedly easy to use, particularly for Grandma and her need for Internet/Email/Word Processor/Minesweeper/Solitaire (plus GNUchess for Grandpa,) or for a dedicated Game/Internet station for the living room. The possibilities are limitless.

Guess it's time to get to hackin and get those install routines up to snuff.

Re:Think "applications"

[Jungle guy]

This idea has already been implemented. If you go to the Lindows website you will find that you can buy a computer without a hard disk and that uses a Linux-based live CD. Have you ever heard of someone using it at home? Me neither.

This concept is interesting, but I think it works better on Kiosks and some corporate enviroments, to replace thin clients.

Re:Think "applications"

[1u3hr]

It's a lot like console computing: plug in a cartridge and play. It's so different from the "traditional" computing model where software is carefully installed into an environment...

If by "traditional" you mean Windows or *.ix. But consider good old DOS apps. Unzip to a directory, add it to your path, and run. To uninstall, delete the directory. No registry, config, libraries. And many Mac apps were even simpler: drag off the installer to the hard disk. Run. OSX is a bit more involved.

Re:Think "applications"

[moncyb]

as a simple user I really find unmanageable the ... "let's put some in /etc, some in /bin and some in /var" approaches...

There is a reason for that. If everything is just dumped on a single hard drive, then the single directory per program works fine. Once you get more complex, then it has problems.

What if you need a local admin to be able to edit the global config of a box, but don't want him/her to install programs? What if you have a thousand machines which will all have the same software (hosted on nfs), but need different config files?

What if you want to make a cdrom, but still allow the user to change the config (in /etc) and add more software (in /usr/local). What if a program on the cdrom needs to store and modify data, but it doesn't belong in a user's home directory nor /tmp? (such as /var/spool/mail or /var/spool/news or /var/log)

There are significant advantages in separating directories.

Re:Think "applications"

[moncyb]

You have a point, but one does not need to create a bootable CD just to run software without installing it. Live CDs are great for trying out a new OS or for repairing a broken system or for running your OS on a friend's computer, but I don't see why anyone would want to use them just so they could run a specific application without installing it.

Running an applictation without installing is a great idea for some purposes (though one should still have the option of a full install). It can be done without a live cd. It's as simple as having an icon on the desktop (or whereever) which does a mount /mnt/cdrom; cd /mnt/cdrom; ./runcd.linux

No need for an entire live cd. I don't think your idea for a computing console is bad, but there are plenty of people who will still want a system with a hard drive running their favorite os. Couldn't the base system be on ROM? For general application programs, I don't see the advantage to including an OS on the CD...

Re:Think "applications"

[Wolfrider]

--No HD because it breaks the "console" model? What are you, on crack? There's a huge vote-in going on at (gamespy?) over MS's pending decision to possibly leave the HD out of X-Box2.

--Guess what: The Overwhelming Majority WANT THE HARD DRIVE to stay included!!

Re:Think "applications"

[Thing 1]

Running an applictation without installing is a great idea for some purposes [...]

If you like this idea, you might be interested in a company called Softricity -- they make an install-less environment for Windows, and the software runs in a virtual environment (virtual registry and file system), so if two applications have conflicts and cannot be run on the same machine, run them through Softricity's environment and they can run on the same machine!

This is amazing for environments with Citrix silos, with apps that must be installed on specific Citrix servers and not others; with Softricity, they can be run on all the Citrix servers, meaning you can eliminate servers from your environment and save on hardware costs, management, electricity, etc.

I love their stuff and use it daily.

Custom distros became...

[nereid666]

don't miss this comic about lice-cd distros.. http://comic.escomposlinux.org/ecol-144-e.png

new game: find the live CD trojan Distro...

[SethJohnson]

I dunno. All this random live CD distro stuff is seriously diffusing trustworthiness. if you ask me. When there are only 5 supposed users of one of these Live CD distros, it's quite possible a given downloadable distro could be a trojan. It might either fdisk your hard drive or do any number of things on your LAN. It would be hella-easy to modify a Knoppix to put the ethernet card into promiscuous mode and then forward all interesting data to some IRC server in Bulgaria. Happening while your cousin experiences linux for the first time on a computer at work.

All I'm saying is, stick with the live CD distros coming from as reputable sources as you can possibly find. Avoid the obscure ones.

Re:new game: find the live CD trojan Distro...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one of the reasons why vmware was developed. Download the iso, boot from the file (mounted as a cd drive, form the program config), try the distro for some time, check how did the "virtual" hdd drive is. If it's the same md5, everything's fine. Go toast it.

By the way, there are other ways of trying this. On a pc long time forgotten pc on a dark corner of a computer lab or cibercafe, for example. Or just unplug the HDD. You know how to un/plug them, or got them on extraible racks, don't you?

Then I've missed it on purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

For a good reason.

P2P networks are (or will be soon) illegal and I have no wish to get my IP-number in some RIAA/MPAA/FBI database.

My cousing's first time experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Happening while your cousin experiences linux for the first time

Mmm... what I would give to be able to have my hot little cockteaser of a cousin her "first time experience" - and I'm not talking about linux here.

What about XOL?

[ottawanker]

What about XOL? I was looking for a nice Live CD the other day, and found XOL. Haven't tried it out yet, but it looks pretty decent.

Re:What about XOL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows?! Hah! We run SoL Linux!

S O L ?

I'm sure they were wanting to do something cool with the sol/sun thing, but it really sounds bad.

Tivo CD's

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the several Tivo Boot CD's. These are specifically designed for various Tivo related tasks, such as upgrading Tivo drives, installing networking drivers, etc, etc.

It's not that I'm not willing to pay

[muyuubyou]

It's I don't pay for things I know scraps about.

Re:It's not that I'm not willing to pay

[Ziviyr]

Yeah, same here.

I just felt like trying to support them for some reason.

(and when I said "discontented few", I mean those who've tried Knoppix first and wern't happy with it, I don't believe there are alot of those type of people here)

Slight Boo Boo

[fyrestrtr]

Found this Copyright (C) 2004 by Nicholas Brand on IE 6 at the bottom of the page. Otherwise, good list :)

Re:Slight Boo Boo

[Exantrius]

If he wants to copyright it, it's his call.

He put in the time to do it, you didn't. If he wants to protect his work-- Which I am sure he put into this list-- then it's his goddamned choice.

It doesn't say he will use the copyright for ill, maybe he just wants to keep his list as a single depository-- doesn't want a million people to copy the list, then add one?...

Sheesh... /Ex

Re:Slight Boo Boo

[prestomation]

I think he was talking about the "on IE 6" part, NOT the copywrite.

Re:Slight Boo Boo

[fyrestrtr]

Actually, there was both IE 6 and there was a slight error in the HTML (where the actual code for the link was being displayed).

Unfortunately, I managed to post it without selected the "Plain Old Text" format, which proceeded to make me look like a complete dolt.

However, the problems seems to have been fixed.

Great Job

[kompiluj]

Great job, brother!
But I would also add:
SUSE LINUX for i386 Live-Eval
MandrakeMove
or were you fishing only for non-commercial ones (or Knoppix derivatives) or something?

Re:Great Job

[phoxix]

or were you fishing only for non-commercial ones (or Knoppix derivatives) or something?

MandrakeMove is 100% FLOSS. I don't see how that would differ from a non-commercial distro

Sunny Dubey

Re:Great Job

[bhtooefr]

He's got SUSE.

I did complain on his comment system about the, ahem, lack of MandrakeMove (and when I got around to it, I happened to be running it on a MandrakeMove system).

Salvare isnt listed

[Leoric]

I use Salvare. It is great, and is loaded with apt, so you never miss any software. Its made for credit card sized CDs, so I am always carring one in my wallet. http://salvare.sourceforge.net/ Salvare is: "Salvare (from the Latin "to rescue") is a small Linux distribution designed for small, credit-card sized CDs which typically hold around 34MB. More Linux than tomsrtbt but less than Knoppix, it aims to provide a useful workstation as well as a rescue disk."

Re:Salvare isnt listed

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great.

What I want is a credit-card CD that will boot to X, with either ssh X-tunneling, or rdesktop. That way wherever i am I can connect to my home machines and use the stup i already have.

I'll have to look it up, see if I can find such a thing.

What about the Original PPC G3

[ColeNielsen]

Is there a LiveCD that will boot on an "OldWorld" PowerBook 3400c without the use of an OS 9 install?

It would need sound support, and network support...

Linux's Killer App?

[dfn_deux]

I really think that Live CD distros might end up being Linux's killer app. I mean with the current state of the OS and it's compatibility with existing office applications and whatnot the "last mile" is all we really need and that is actually getting people to try it. Now I don't know about you, but most people that I know that aren't technically minded are not going to be willing to mess around with repartitioning their only hard drive to try linux. However everyone that I've shown knoppix to has been very impressed with the ease of use and compatibility with exisisting hardware and files produced with non-linux applications. If you can get 5 people to try linux with a live CD then 1 of them might convert to linux full time and it's likely that the ones who aren't interested will pass the knoppix CDs off to someone else...

once the last mile is crossed we will have arrived.

P.S. knoppix boots faster than alot of XP installs that alone might be enough.

Re:Linux's Killer App?

[foobario]

You cut right through the fanboy cult rabidity that is often displayed by linux afficionados. The bottom line is that if you make it easier for the sheep to use, and more importantly you have an easy way to show them, on their hardware, how it works, they will use it. Dazzle them with the blinkenlights *first*, then work on the ideology. 'Free' as in anything confuses people sometimes, but empowerment vs sucking on the MS teat is pretty appealing. In the process, you might even make some of them stop being sheep.

Gentoo liveCD

[Anonymous Coward]

The gentoo developers are working on a program that can do just that. Go take a look at the Catalyst homepage:

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/catalyst/

How cheap do you want?

[soundman32]

I can buy DVD-R in the UK for UK0.32 (~UD$0.50).

That's only 12p more than a CD!

How cheap do you want it to be?

Neil

Re:How cheap do you want?

[yerfatma]

I have a hard time finding them in the US for anything close to that in small (= 100) quantities. Between $1.00 and $1.50 is as low as I've found. Not expensive, but not so cheap they're throwaway. By comparison, my girlfriend just picked up 50 CDs for $1.00 (after $10 rebate).

Re:How cheap do you want?

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

Try OfficeMax, they regularly have DVD-R discs on sale.

They recently had a 50 pack of 1x rated DVD-R General Use discs for $29.99 prior to a $20 mail in rebate. My sister provided me with a $10 customer appreciation card that brought my total cost down to $1.21 plus the cost of a stamp, after rebate. That works out to just over $0.03 per disc.

I also check the local computer shows where I can regularly buy name brand DVD-R General Use v2.0 rated at 2x or higher for no more than $1 each in packs of 50. I usually pay $45 for a 50 pack of whatever brand they happen to have that month.

Re:How cheap do you want?

[soulsteal]

I buy my dvd-r media from www.supermediastore.com

Ritek 4x DVD-R media for $0.97 each and I got 100 count last time I ordered.

Very much worth it to me.

Re:How cheap do you want?

[Tassach]

Well, when you consider that the all the big home electronics and office supply stores frequently have CD-R spindles for $0 after rebate, you really can't beat them on a $/MB basis. A spindle of 50 800MB CD-Rs for the net cost of a single first-class postage stamp ($0.37) and envelope (call it $0.03), plus 2 months interest on $20 ($0.10 at 3.0%APR) works out to a penny a disk.

LiveDVD .. coming soon (maybe)

[tkdack]

Still somewhat in it's infancy .. Catalyst.

It is usable now, just requires a little effort to get everything working smoothly.

Re:LiveDVD .. coming soon (maybe)

[axxackall]

Catalyst is dealing with ISO format, thus has a limitation of 2GB (inherited from FAT). What I am looking is some HOWTO about building LiveDVD with either a bootable UDF filesystem, which would give me full 4.7GB partition, or a combo of a bootable ISO partition + an additional UDF partition.

So, if , for example your bootable ISO would be 700MB, then your UDF would be 4GB - pretty good, huh? This case is good when you take some existing LiveCD image and slightly modify it (1) to mount UDF and (2) to know what is there.

Or if your ISO would be 2GB, then your UDF would be 2.7 GB accordingly. This case is good if you build your own LiveCD image and your "root" partition must be big enough already (by some reason).

UDF is important also in situations when you want to save something back on DVD (if you have DVD-/+RW hardware).

And of course I should mention another limitation of ISO: filenames. They must be short, they should not have any strange characters, and the path in the filestructure must be not too deep. With ISO we have to use some dirty hacks to work around. With UDF you don't have such limitations.

Do you know if Catalyst has any plans to work with UDF?

PowerPC Live CD's?

[indypharmd]

I was looking around this weekend for a LiveCD for a G3 ibook. I'd like to see what GNU/linux would be like on this little beauty, but the only liveCD I found was Gentoo. Are there others?

Re:Wifi out of the box: MandrakeMove

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know if any of these distros have wifi support out of the box?

I tried this with MandrakeMove. It worked right out of the box. They have a free download edition and a purchace edition at a fair price with various USB keys. And the USB integration is well done.

Good luck!

See also

[arvindn]

Wikipedia entry on LiveCD

Forgot "Trinity Rescue Kit"

[Anonymous Coward]

The Trinity Rescue Kit 1.1 is a Linux distribution based on Mandrake 9.1 binaries. It is designed to rescue/repair/prepare dead or damaged systems, be it Linux or Windows. It has networking capabilities like ssh, samba and ftp and supports about every network card, disk controller and USB controller. You can use it to repair a Windows 2000 or Windows XP system by setting the checkdisk flag or editing the registry or just reset the administrator password (or any other user). You can even undelete files from an ntfs, ext2 or fat partition.

Cheap UK DVD-R's

[Clueless_Medic]

Try this deal if it is still in stock. The site is
Blankdiscshop

DVD-R deals

Look for {DV 3108}
.
Direct link

25 DVD-R's for 6.49 Pounds sterling is a bargain by any standard. Dual format writers are available there too.

Re:Cheap UK DVD-R's

[byolinux]

Nice... local company too (Paignton, Devon..)

I can start to back up my Mac now.

Re:Cheap UK DVD-R's

[Threni]

> Nice... local company too (Paignton, Devon..)

I went there once. It was shut. (Paignton, not that shop!).

Re:Cheap UK DVD-R's

[byolinux]

I don't actually live in Paignton, thankfully... I live in Devon though.

Re:Cheap UK DVD-R's

[Threni]

> I live in Devon though.

Hmmph. Devon was where I went camping with my parents when I was about 7 and we had to leave a few days early because someone claimed I had been attacking horses with a cricket bat! I was never sure whether it was a case of mistaken identity, or if the camp site owners had to get rid of a few people because they'd over booked or what.

Why stop in Devon when you can keep going and end up in Cornwall, thats what I say! :)

but about dual-boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

great list! but which of these allows installation into a file partition on a windows box - to use seriously, and dont require the CDor a partitioning of the disc (the usual way) - i ask, because I believe Mandrake used to allow for this...and its a great noninvasive way of putting Linux on friends system... partitioning being a no-go and liveCD's being severely speed limited (though great for test driving! - cant wait to see new Knoppix now that the nForce chipset is much better supported in the kernel!)

X-Box live distros

[Anonymous Coward]

Why aren't there more live distros for the X-box? I can only think of dyne:bolic.

Live CD's

[Techen]

Well, i'll be honest. I'm not a huge Linux fan. I'm not a computer geek. I'm just an average joe that likes to pudder around with his PC. That said, I am forever in debt to slashdot for showing me Knoppix. That CD has saved my bacon so many times. These LIVE CD's are gift to all us computer amatures. When we need to correct/save something we just screwed up, it offers a stable way to make the changes.

Our Bandwidth Saturating Overlords?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of them ... (wait for it!) ... it'd be called a slashdot!

*rimshot*

For those with Linux installed . . .

[user no. 590291]

. . . has anyone published instructions on how to make a Windows 2000 live CD :)?

Re: For those with Linux installed . . .

[on]

You probably missed this story

History is repeating itself. Thin Client anyone?

[OlivierB]

Alright, I agree with pretty much everybody about the whole Read-only positive aspects of live CD. No Hard Drive , easier administration etc. BUt guys wake up. The industry has created an aswer to all this and it's called THIN-CLIENT. That,s right. On the local machine they run an os of some ROM or even better boot from the network. On one central server there is a shared drive, permissions for applications etc. I reckon that is the future of entreprise desktop. Do this remind AS/400 to anybody else but me? Is history repeating itself or what?

WTF!

[Accipiter]

While SLAX is listed in that list, the author didn't note that Disc 2 of Slackware's 4 CD set is a bootable live CD.

Go Slackware!

Re:WTF!

[Anonymous Coward]

Every other live distro is CRAP!

Go Slackware!

Ok, First, Get out of my head!

[RCO]

I spent quite a bit of time yesterday looking for this information, and here it is. Your creppin' me out.
And B. wheres the links?
I mean hey, if your going to help me be lazy, don't do a half assed job.

Thanks

Re:Ok, First, Get out of my head!

[RCO]

OK, OK, there are links, but they were the same colour as regular text in my browser, and I was too lazy to look at it really close. Maybe I don't need any help being lazy, actually, I'm not sure I could improve my lazy stats at this point.

Once again, Thanks!

Linux Live

[quinkin]

The Linux Live bash scripts were used to create the Slax live CD. There is of course the Gentoo live CD site that others have posted.

Q.

Re:Linux Live

[axxackall]

Both cases are dealing with ISO format, thus both have a limitation of 2GB (inherited from FAT). What I am looking is some HOWTO about building LiveDVD with either a bootable UDF filesystem, which would give me full 4.7GB partition, or a combo of a bootable ISO partition (700MB) + an additional 4GB UDF partition.

Forgot dappix

[Anonymous Coward]

In danish:
http://tyge.sslug.dk/knoppix/

KnoppixMyth works wonders for a PVR

[wilsonjo]

Coincidentially, I used the live KnoppixMyth CD to get my PVR working this week. I struggled for 2 weeks trying to get my Shuttle SN41G2 Xpc to work with Slackware 9.1. I then stumbled upon the KnoppixMyth web site and decided to give it a try.
In less than two hours, I was up and running, recording TV.
Much credit and thanks due to the KnoppixMyth guys for the easy install!!
BTW - Myth TV PVR Box Specs:

• Shuttle SN41G2 with RAM + XP 2500 - $369
• Hauppauge PVR-250 OEM $96
• 120 Gig HD $70

Re:KnoppixMyth works wonders for a PVR

[fishfish]

Could you provide link(s) to where you bought? Prices seem pretty good.

Thanks

Re:KnoppixMyth works wonders for a PVR

[wilsonjo]

SN41G2 ($209) + 512 MB Crucial Ram ($75) + Athlon XP 2500 ($85) all was bought at Newegg.com. They were running a deal on the SN41G2 which I believe has since expired.

Hauppauge PVR-250 OEM was bought on Ebay for $86 plus $10 shipping. You can usually find these cards for around $130 online.

120 Gig Western Digital HD was bought at Best Buy for $139 with a $70 rebate.

I also had to throw in an old DVD-Rom from my old PC that I had laying around.

Re:KnoppixMyth works wonders for a PVR

[fishfish]

I thought that would take some wheeling and dealing ... Thanks.

Re:Wifi out of the box-Knoppix 3.3.

[jarich]

I've used Slashdot, Debian, mandrake, gnoppix, earlier knoppixes, pcliveOS, etc and so forth.

Knoppix 3.3 is the ~first~ to support most of the hardware on my laptop. The wireless card worked, the dvd player worked, cd burner... it even saw my wife's digital camera!

All this without patching a kernel, downloading a utility or compiling anything. I know that to most hard core linux users, that's okay. But I want a distro that I can use not that I can spend time setting up.

It didn't support the power features of the laptop, but I guess I have to do ~something~ to the kernel to make it feel like linux. :)

Unreal Tournament 2k4 Live CD

[nten]

There was one for 2003, anyone made one for 2004 demo yet? It might help convince some of my coworkers to see the light. And as an ealrier poster said, put it on the machines at bestbuy. And leave it running in flyby mode.

Re:Unreal Tournament 2k4 Live CD

[AlXtreme]

I'll probably include 2k4 with my next morphix game edition. ET was getting old anyway...

gratuitous mention of Gentoo post

[garbagedisposal]

quick somebody mention Gentoo ...oh wait!

Re:For those with Linux installed . . . see Bart!

[jarich]

Of course!

http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/

Bart's bootable CDs

I haven't used it but a friend of mine swears it is trivial.

Another newbie question

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an old laptop that I would like to turn into a digital picture frame.

I would like to have a small distribution and a bunch of pictures on a disc that I could just boot and run.

Any recommendations?

Wishlist... laptop power... ftp home dirs...

[jarich]

I've never seen a release that can handle my laptop's power functions (battery, etc) but I was able to get it working via patching kernel an ACPI Patch

I'd love to see a release that focused on the power management as well as WiFi, etc

also, I don't want to store my settings on a USB key chain.. that costs $$ to buy! :) Set me up to store my settings on an FTP server!!!! Accessible from anywhere in the world! Security (via username and password) built it.

joe sixpack at work could try out distro X and then take it home and keep trying it.

also, it's time for a common preferences format (XML anyone)? so that I can set prefs in Knoppix and then reboot and point my Slax distro at the same home dir.

:)

Re:Wishlist... laptop power... ftp home dirs...

[74nova]

i understand that you were mostly joking about the usb key costing money, but thats why i dont have one yet. if i werent a broke married college senior(thats like triple redundant) i would have one. however, walmart now has a 128MB one for $35. so, those things are coming down in price pretty quickly. $35 isnt bad at all

Re:Wishlist... laptop power... ftp home dirs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Set me up to store my settings on an FTP server!!!! Accessible from anywhere in the world! Security (via username and password) built it.

You mean ssh/sftp, right?

The killer app for a live CD...

[Sodade]

Public browsing workstations. At my SO's library, they have eight win95/98 boxes that the public uses to browse the internet. They each have Centurion Guard which basically provides the same level of security as a HD free box.

I guess the only issue is that sites are designed for IE. Are the new versions of Mozzila smart enough to render web standards AND microsoft standards?

You missed one.

[iguanaboy]

Mandrake has a live distro. You should add it to your list.

One more: DebianNP

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's another boot-from-CD linux distro that is worth mentioning: DebianNP. As the name suggests, this version of knoppix, is being developped to support the non-profit sector.

multiple setups on one dvd?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I'd like to see is a ways to put a couple of
diffrent linux setups on a dvd and upon boot it ask wich one i want to use.
can this be done, if so how?

Flash Ram instead of CDROM?

[nurb432]

Has anyone moved one of the smaller CDROM distros to a flash ram?

This could help elimate the problem of slow cdrom drives, and premature wear on them....

Current pcs' can boot off usb keys.....right?

Re:Flash Ram instead of CDROM?

[bhtooefr]

Puppy (although it was the other way, flash to live-cd), and something else (I think it was a Damn Small deriative) are both flash-capable distros.

Re:Flash Ram instead of CDROM?

[satterth]

Beware... some motherboards that say they can boot from USB can not. I've two boards here that say they support it, but only one works properly. http://www.goosee.com/puppy/flash-puppy.htm has a tutorial using a USB CF reader.

Another feckless list

[Anonymous Coward]

I found several sites with Linux distribution lists online without too much searching. The distribution list at LWN is more complete (over 300 listed) and more informative. LWN's list includes CD based, floppy based, Zip based, embedded, country specific, etc. Check it out....

TeX Live

[sanctimonius hypocrt]

Is another that's been around for a while, but I've never used it myself.

It's here.

Live CD Demos

[cattail.nu]

So I have this very nice high end box, running, oh let's say one of those Linux type OS's, with VMware.

In theory, I ought to be able to store all these ISOs on one of the rather large disk drives, then mount the file as a drive, and boot the live CD in VMware.

It follows that I ought to be able to make a pick list of all the live cds and run several side-by-side as a demo to friends of what's available without all that booting/rebooting that's hard on the hardware.

At the end of the demo, I could give them a CD of the OS they liked best.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

----------

Re:Live CD Demos

[jarich]

Many of them do that already.

The latest Knoppix (3.3) has a feature to 1) copy the cd into RAM and run from there. 2) Copy the cd to a hard drive partition and run from there or 3) run from the hard drive partition you already copied it to.

I'm not sure how well they play with other distros on the same partition tho

Re:Live CD Demos

[patbob]

In theory, I ought to be able to store all these ISOs on one of the rather large disk drives, then mount the file as a drive, and boot the live CD in VMware

I've been thinking somethign similar to solve another problem, so I went and tried it with the odd few ISOs I have lying around. Yes, it does seem to sort of work. However, I found a bug in my rather old version of VMWare when trying to boot disk 1 of the Fedora core, so it might not work for all the distros.

There are also other problems. One I know if is that VMWare doesn't emulate 3D accelleration in their virtual video hardware, so that won't be available. Then there's also the issue of needing VMWare installed, and runnnable (given how brittle it's configuration, it isn't likely to be runnable at a moments notice if you tend to change HW or SW often).

So yes, you probably could do this, at least with some of the distros. However, wouldn't it just be easier to burn them all to a CD and reboot the hardware? It's not like it causes significant wear and tear on it to boot from a CD. Disruption yes, wear and tear, no.

Re:Wifi out of the box-Knoppix 3.3.

[kevin_ka]

I've used Slashdot, Debian, mandrake, gnoppix, earlier knoppixes, pcliveOS, etc and so forth.

Where do I get this slashdot OS??

Two omissions

[kg4eyf]

Flonix and Puppy. These are both small, and capable of being run off of more than a cd, but they do have bootable isos. They both have flash drive versions, which I have taken looks at while designing my USB pen drive distribution RUNT.

When I'm doing something people don't understand they don't question whether or not I'm doing my job, because it is my job to do all the things people don't understand.

Re:History is repeating itself. Thin Client anyone

[fishbot]

This is not the case. These CDs do not provide a thin client at all. All processing is done client side, and they can be used at any machine without a specific server.

With a thin client/terminal server system, you would have a fully running server which you could connect just about any hardware to. However, if you were down at the local computer shop and wanted to test compatibility, would you lug your server down there? How about if you were at a friends house and needed to fix a local HDD problem using a more useful program than DOS fdisk?

No, these CDs are NOT thin clients. They are temporary fat clients.

Gwynux!

[Black Rabbit]

Here's the distro my friend Gwyn created:

http://gwynux.ca

and her homepage:

http://www.toadware.ca

I know she has used it to create a server version that runs completely off CD, making the system partition cracker-proof. Since Gwyn is also into audio/video processing, anything's possible.

You forgot...

[eberry]

Shuttle SN41G2 with RAM + XP 2500 - $369
Hauppauge PVR-250 OEM $96
120 Gig HD $70


KnoppixMyth: Free (as in freedom)
Not paying a monthly fee for Tivo: priceless

forgot Linuxconsole !

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.linuxconsole.org/

for games first and then for other things. Very nice livecd as it is modular. You burn with multissession the core.iso, and then build your distro burning the *.iso you want (games, openoffice, mozilla, scanner, cups).

Smart isn't it ?

More info

[Anonymous Coward]

Should have a link to what each is based on, ie Morphix->Knoppix->Debian

Re:Wifi out of the box-Knoppix 3.3.

[jarich]

I mean slackware. I need more coffee!

MP3Jukbox distro

[cat_jesus]

What I'd love to see is a bootable distro with an MP3 player which you can configure and control via http. I think this would be a killer app for a bootable linux CD. I've wanted something like this for a while to breath new life into an old k62/350. It's not that fast but it should be fast enough to just play mp3's from my file server. Since I don't have the time I haven't really been able to work on it. But if I had a bootable CD ready to go it would probably take me all of 30 minutes to set up.

Then I could burn copies for my MS coworkers who all have similar situations and turn them on to linux.

What about laptops?!?

[bach37]

What about a live CD that will work with laptops, including the power management/wi-fi features?

Scott

good firewall distro?

[RelliK]

I am looking for a good cd/floppy based firewall distro for a 486. Cable/DSL support, configurable iptables rules, caching DNS server, ssh server. Any recommendations?

Live CD X11 on the bochs pentium emulator?

[nutznboltz]

Can anyone name a Live CD where X11 works when you boot it on the bochs pentium emulator?

Thanks

Re:History is repeating itself. Thin Client anyone

[the_machine]

A CD is lots easier for me to carry around then a thin client is. Kind of hard for me to put a thin client and central server at my friend's house, my dad's house, and the kiosk at school.

warlinux

[Anonymous Coward]

https://sourceforge.net/projects/warlinux/

for all your wardrivers out there.

Distrowatch

[Anonymous Coward]

Distrowatch also has a list of Linux-based LiveCDs:
http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=cd
OR
from their home page click on SEARCH and then select CD-based Distributions (Live CDs).

Links?

[DocJD]

How hard would it have been to add links to the list?

Anyone see this site off the list?

[javajames27]

I started looking at the website when I saw that a URL into the website was: http://nwst.de/livelinuxcd/lilinux.phtml?include=h tm/en_about.htm.. So, here I am, being the snoop that I am, and I tried: http://nwst.de/livelinuxcd/lilinux.phtml?include=/ etc/passwd.. It works! ROFL

Heres one not on the list ...

[doublesix]

AdvanceCD is a bootable cd that contains the AdvanceMAME emulator and plenty of room for all your roms. Works like a charm.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

AdvanceCD is awesome, even beats KnoppixMame. The menu system is better and the distro leaves tons of space on the CD for roms.

Non English??

[rueger]

Not to detract from the overall hard work going into the list, but would it have taken too much more effort to list the languages used on these distros instead just "Non English"?

It's also a bit misleading to describe these as having "non English" as their "Primary Function(s)".

Remarkable as it may seem, the vast majority of the world does not speak or read English.

Minor suggestion

[Unregistered]

I like how you list the PPC livecds, but i think a nice feature would be to also show if it runs on the G5. Nobody really seems to be sure if a given livecd distro supports G5 and i haven't found one that works yet.

SmoothWall

[genmanath]

I think he left SmoothWall off the list ( smoothwall.org). It's in the bootable-business card, minimal firewall distro category.

PPC compatible?

[mojoNYC]

i've got an old beige G3 PPC that i'd like to use to learn/play with linux--do any of these live CDs work on ppc?

-mojo

Interesting Paradigm

[Ridgelift]

Remember when computers could only run one program? You'd grab a floppy, put it in the drive, then boot the machine? It was probably obvious to many, but I just realized that this is sort of a return to that. No worries about viruses, operating system is customized to the application(s).

I wonder what other "progress" in computers could be improved by using ideas from the past.

overlooked a list of 56 at lwn.net

[merriam]

LWN's list of 56 CD-based distributions

This is a section in a list of distributions of various types with short descriptions.

re : my favorite live disc

[Nurseman]

My favorite live disc has not been mentioned

The Who Live at Leeds Has to be one of the best live discs

What ? You mean LINUX disc's ? Oh, sorry, never mind.

Notebook support

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does linux have such crappy notebook support?

More and more people are using notebooks computers.

cookies / cd burning

[moncyb]

Surfing the web: ... no cookies

I see no cookies as an inconvenience. For example, I'd hate to have to log in to Slashdot every time I visited the site...

Media burner: ... requires lots of RAM but that is not an issue

Maybe I'm rusty as to how cd burners work, but couldn't one be engineered to only burn small portions of the iso image at one time, so it wouldn't have to store the whole thing in RAM? Without a hard drive, doing it this way be a huge advantage.

Because permanent shared storage breaks the "console" model and will inevitably be used by software providers in the wrong way.

I don't think one should take away features just because some rogue developer may misuse it. If that is such a concern, why not just create a security model which lets the end user decide if he/she will allow the program to use the hard drive...

BSD list?

[decavo]

I have seen the discussion about the depenguinator (http://www.daemonology.net/depenguinator/) on slashdot earlier, but are there any BSD livecds available anywhere?

That would make it easier for people to try the feels of FreeBSD, hopefully making much discussion of Linux and FreeBSD more insightful.

Re:Hmmm...Ninnle

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm...nice try, you imposter, but for this to be a true Ninnle troll, you should also put Ninnle in the header for easy tracking!

signed...

Dr. B. Ninnle
(Originator and Head of the Ninnle Project, best friend of Linus)

Re:Geting around the 2GB ISO filesize

[Wolfrider]

--Check out these googles:

http://www.mail-archive.com/dvdrtools-users@nong nu .org/msg00251.html

--This guy talks about creating an ISO9660 filesystem on a *raw partition* instead of loopback:
http://vancouver-webpages.com/vanlug/20 01-1a/0325. html
http://vancouver-webpages.com/vanlug/2001-1a /0324. html

--Search for "DVD image creation" - use ext2 instead:
http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:ltr 4wBjagkQJ: expressivefreedom.org/Projects/PVR/Firewire-Method ology.html+iso9660+filesize+limit&hl=en&ie=UTF -8

--I'd also use ' mke2fs -m0 empty_file ' so it doesn't reserve any space for root. However, this method isn't really Windoze-compatible.

x86 Centric

[Inuchance]

Sure, a couple of Live CDs for PPC are listed there, but nearly as many as x86 has. I tried downloading some version of Knoppix that I could run on my iBook, and it ran awfully. No trackpad support, X wouldn't start up (hated my video card, a Radeon 9200), and it didn't recognize Airport Extreme. All I wanted was to see KDE... (I've only used wmaker, to be honest.) Oh well, I've got the KDE packages for Slackware downloading over on one of the other computers at school.

Careful, some1 might catch u playing w/ur pudder

[Anonymous Coward]

>'m just an average joe that likes to pudder around

gewg_

Re:128MB USB key, $35 @ Walmart

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd still have to buy a USB card for my 233MHz box. 8-)

BCCD is missing, the Bootable Cluster CD

[L1nuxGuy]

Albeit a bit late in the thread, the Bootable Cluster CD has been an active project for about two years. It is based off of the LNX-BBC (where I'm a developer), but is an independent project supporting OpenMosix, MPICH, LAM, PVM, and all of the necessary scripts and debuggers to tie together a drop-in clustering solution. It's mainly aimed at Educational institutions with lots of Windows labs, but no dedicated clustering resources.

On Nero.........

[DABANSHEE]

....I made a BeOS CD which has a bootable ISO partition & a live BFS partition that the installer clones onto a menu chosen HDD partition.

I forgot what I did on Nero as I simply just mindlessly followed the intructions on some website. Actually I think I copy 'n pasted some script.

Thank you!

[tvh2k]

I was looking for something like this just the other day...better than distrowatch!