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18 Live Linux CDs -- In A Row
prostoalex writes "OSNews carries "a quick roundup" of 18 (they are not kidding, eighteen) live Linux distributions. Among those who made the list: Basilisk (based on Fedora), BeatrIX (based on Debian/Knoppix/Ubuntu), Berry Linux (based on Fedora), Damn Small Linux (based on Debian), FreeSBIE (based on Free BSD), Gnoppix (Knoppix/Debian plus Gnome, now merged with Ubuntu), Kanotix (modified Knoppix/Debian), Knoppix (the first big live CD, based on Debian), Luit (Debian/Xfce, rox filing system), Mandrake Move (based on Mandrake), Mepis (Debian), Morphix (modular Debian), PCLinuxOS Preview (a Mandrake fork), Sam (Mandrake/Xfce), SLAX (Slackware), Suse 9.1 and 9.2 (rpm-based), Ubuntu Live (Debian), Xfld (Debian/Damn Small Linux and Xfce). To call it a review would be a stretch, although a helpful paragraph on each operating system's claim to fame is provided."
Lemme fire up catalyst real quick and give you a few more to play with...
Seriously, for those who'd like to play with creating their very own custom Live CD, Gentoo's catalyst makes it really easy. It takes a bit of time, and could use some better docs, though.
Why use a Linux Live CD?
Well, there are four main reasons.
* You want to test drive Linux (or that particular distribution). You want to give it a look, and see what programs it offers.
* You want to test your hardware. Will it work with Linux?
* You want to install Linux to your hardware. If you like it, you might want to make the leap right then.
* You want to do real work.
What does real work consist of? Usually, it means:
* Surf the web, meaning "look at html pages." On occasion, it's also handy to have built-in plugins: flash, pdf, shockwave, and the codecs necessary to run a movie trailer.
* Email. You might want a dedicated email client. More often, using a CD means that you're fetching your mail via a browser.
* Chat.
* Open or create an office document. It could be that you're just trying to read a document, spreadsheet, or Power Point that someone emailed you. Or you're trying to create one.
* Print. So you view or create a document. Maybe emailing is good enough. Sometimes, you want a copy.
* Read/write to a floppy or USB pen drive. Either of these might store your configuration files, or documents you're working on as you travel.
Here's my home collection to date (and while it isn't complete, it's a good look at today's offerings).
* Basilisk (based on Fedora)
* BeatrIX (based on Debian/Knoppix/Ubuntu)
* Berry Linux (based on Fedora)
* Damn Small Linux (based on Debian)
* FreeSBIE (based on Free BSD)
* Gnoppix (Knoppix/Debian plus Gnome, now merged with Ubuntu)
* Kanotix (modified Knoppix/Debian)
* Knoppix (the first big live CD, based on Debian)
* Luit (Debian/Xfce, rox filing system)
* Mandrake Move (based on Mandrake)
* Mepis (Debian)
* Morphix (modular Debian)
* PCLinuxOS Preview (a Mandrake fork)
* Sam (Mandrake/Xfce)
* SLAX (Slackware)
* Suse 9.1 and 9.2 (rpm-based)
* Ubuntu Live (Debian)
* Xfld (Debian/Damn Small Linux and Xfce)
The most significant way to categorize them is their software management systems. Most of the Live CD's fall into one of two camps: Debian apt-based (Damn Small, Gnoppix, Kanotix, Knoppix, Luit, Mepis, Morphix, Ubuntu, Xfld), or rpm-based (Basilisk, Berry, or SUSE).
As I hope is obvious from the above, Debian is winning. The apt-get program allows the user -- at least one who isn't afraid of the command line -- to easily add and remove programs, even to upgrade to a newer distribution with a single command.
In general, all of the Live CD's booted, found the Internet through an ethernet port, and launched their bundled programs.
Few of them managed to print. Often, it wasn't even possible to figure out how you were supposed to set this up. (I freely admit that the problem may be me. CUPS has proved slippery for me.) Many of the distros also had trouble locating a wireless connection.
Some, of course, were faster than others. A few were so slow (taking over 5 minutes to load a program, for instance) that they weren't even worth trying to use on an old Gateway, 128 megabyte machine (see test machines, below).
Some were easier or more pleasurable to use. This, of course, is subjective, a matter (aside from speed and function) of taste. I'll try to declare my biases as I go along. But in general, "pleasure" means that I found a sense of integral design, a consistent look and feel, a focus on not just lots of choices, but the right choices.
I tested the Linux Live CDs on three machines:
* a Gateway E-3200, PII, with 128 megs of memory, 3D Rage Pro AGP 1X/2X, 10 gig hard drive.
* an HP Pavilion A520n,with 512 megs of memory, nVidia video and sound. The Internet connection for this one is via wireless: an Intersil Corp, PRISMII.5 Wireless LAN card.
* Dell Precision with 256 megs of memory, nVidia video and sound drivers.
_My favorites and why_
On machines with 256 megs or more:
PCLinuxOS (www.pclinuxonline.com) is an offsh
Not a review (either), but this website http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php?sort= &showonly= list a lot more than 18 live CD's (and even it is not complete).
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
There are 200 odd liveCDs on this linkp
http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.ph
Shouldn't it be 17+1? Because last I checked BSD wasn't Linux. Or did it come back from the grave much graver as an incarnation of Linux?
The Farewell Tour II
While knoppix each day has less and less apps, this one is getting more and more. And the machines which typically hang with knoppix (or knoppix based), even using all the "no" options, dynebolic loads happily. Not to mention 64mb ram machines, thankfully window maker based desktop for us in poor countries where these kind of machines abund.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
Surf on over here for the torrent file.
Creative Demolition
I'm looking for a minimalist distro w/ a faster boot time. I don't need 99% of the apps on many distros ... I would just like one w/ firefox to do on-line banking and shopping.
I've been usin Slax and a few others 250 MB but often it takes over 5 minutes to load. This is, virtually the same result on a P3 800 w 640 MB RAM to a 3 GHz A64 w/ 1 GIG RAM. The CD drive is a Lite-on combo @ 40 x or higher read speed.
Ideas?
Use http://www.morphix.org/ and make your own main module? It's basically a chroot Debian install.
You bootstrap Debian (stable, testing, unstable), pack it up into a compressed file, and plop it into your Morphix directory and generate the ISO. It can be as bare-bones as you want it to be.
You do all your work within a Debian chroot, so you get to use all the wonderful Debian tools.
There is no way to find the right Linux distro for you unless you try some out and that is the beauty of these Live cd's. When looking for a new car do you get overwhelmed because there are about 5 bajillion different make/model/options when looking for a car? A computer is the same, you must do some research and do some test driving first. First of all writeups like these should be of some help to you though you might also want to find a friend or someone you know that uses Linux and get their opinion. Obviously since you are a "power user" you should be able to handle it just fine.
For some recomendations I would check out SLAX and Ubunutu (Live cd download is here
I personally use SUSE, but their Live-CD sucks. If you decide to go with a KDE based distro that is what I would choose. If you like GNOME more I would go with Ubuntu. Also, although a lot of people seem to like Knoppix, I have never really liked it too much (mostly because of the messy menu structure). So there you go, try them out. What have you got to lose (besides some time downloading, bandwidth, and a couple blank cd's)?
Microsoft has one it is called WinPE
Tools: Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment
You can't have it unless you qualify for the license.
For mere mortals that want a M$ based live CD there is BartPE which is not M$ endorsed. It uses you Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server CD to build the Live CD. There is also an option to extract the files from your current install on your system if the place you bought it from opted not to give out an install disk.
Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD
I've used BartPE to rescue important files off several Windows XP Pro systems hosed by SP2 (thanks M$). Knoppix works very well for this task too. The fun part of using Knoppix is the owners of the computers can see how cool a GNU/Linux can be. In a few cases the owners asked for a copy of Knoppix to play around with afterwards.
OpenBSD may not be Linux but if someone should make a LiveCD for assuming one isn't out there already. Secure by default LiveCD would be a nice warm and fuzzy.
Disaster Recovery - I've become fond of the (R)ecovery (I)s (P)ossible Linux rescue system
He even publishes a PXE image!
Troubleshooting - To quickly determine if a problem is hardware or software related, boot from a LiveCD
Highly customizable imaging and installation solutions
Microsoft doesn't make a commercial livecd BUT there is a boot cd that runs a custom Windows PE environment called Bart's PE http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ With the addition of the XPE plugin http://sourceforge.net/projects/winpe/ and some tweaking you can have an almost fully fuctional Windows XP desktop from a live cd.
Well, I checked on this - a Google search for Linux points to http://www.linux.org as the first hit. Searching on MSN for Linux returns http://www.linux.com and http://www.linux.org in that order.
If you go to linux.org and click "Download", it brings you to a page that mentions a) that you don't have to install Linux to the hard drive and b) that Knoppix is the most popular Live CD.
I'm not saying it's not a valid point - people are easily confused by "this Linux thing" if they haven't done any research but ultimately I think choice is better than no choice and the answers are within easy reach.
My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
The original, and in my opinion still the best. They seem to get better with every release.
Old versions of Knoppix didn't work properly on my laptop. Recently I tried it on my laptop again, and I was amazed. I basically tested how quickly I could get everything working.
About 15 minutes later I had succesfully set up my local network, internet via ADSL, printer, Samba, and Cd-Writer. As an encore I connected to the internet through GPRS via my cellphone, via the ir port - something that I have never been able to do in Windows.
Best of all: I saved the configuration to a USB key, so now everything is set up correctly as soon as I boot.
siener's youtube channel
Apparently there is a gentoo linux live CD. It's available here... http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=01550#0
Follow the link at the bottom. With Gentoo Linux, download options vary greatly depending on your architecture and installation method, so we will only provide a link to the Gentoo Universal LiveCD here: install-x86-universal-2004.1.iso (674MB).
If you feel like trying it out, it boots from CD anyway, no need for a special LiveCD
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Why don't you try System Rescue CD ?
...) and basic ones (editors, midnight commander, network tools).
http://www.sysresccd.org/
It is gentoo-based, fits very nicely on a mini-cd (I carry one around all the time) and you can "roll your own". Good documentation, great features. And no X.
Quote from their website:
SystemRescueCd is a linux system on a bootable cdrom for repairing your system and your data after a crash. It also aims to provide an easy way to carry out admin tasks on your computer, such as creating and editing the partitions of the hard disk. It contains a lot of system utilities (parted, partimage, fstools,
Aurox is missing, too!
And this, in contrast to Gentoo, IS a Live-CD.
(Not a bad one either)
This fine piece of OS is distributed regularly (including interesting updates & tutorials) with the polish Magazine "Hakin9"
Greetings from Euregio!
FreeSBIE is based on FreeBSD, ergo it is not Linux, but BSD.
Windows doesn't work "out of the box" with semimodern hardware any better than Linux does-- I still have to grab drivers for my soundcard and videocard to make them work with Windows (Radeon 9700 Pro and Audigy). Oh, and my network adaptor as well-- I'm using an NForce2 motherboard and there aren't drivers on the Windows CD itself. I have to install those from an additional CD. Admittedly getting drivers installed is a little easier on Windows, but it's still far beyond what the 'average' user is comfortable with.
This is where Dell makes it easier-- by standardizing on a single configuration on the machine and including the necessary drivers from the start, there's no hassle or headache to getting the hardware working. If Dell were to distribute similarly with a Linux-based config using a standard pre-set hardware config, you'd find it goes pretty much as well.
As for ease of use, I'd put Gentoo at the bottom of the list-- it's definitely a distro for an experienced user, though that's not really a mark against it such that it's designed for people who want additional control and are willing to learn the additional steps to handle it.
There is one; it's called VidaLinux.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
I got the same offer from Mark, to more-or-less merge Morphix and Ubuntu, but decided not to do it. Oh well, free world et al. And it means one liveCD less to try out (either one or the other :)
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