Best Linux Live-CD?
 

Hello,

I'm going to be visiting a friend and I'd like to take along a Linux Live-CD - the ones were you drop in the CD, reboot the computer, and voila! You've got a fully-functional linux OS without touching the hard drive.

But I don't know which one - there are so many different types. Does anyone have any suggestions?

thanks.

I guess I should suggest the obligatory Knoppix. It has just about everything you could fit onto a 700mb cd.

http://knoppix.net/

What is KNOPPIX?

KNOPPIX is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it.
What software is installed on the KNOPPIX-CD?

The following Highlights are available in this Debian-based (www.debian.org) CD:

* Linux-Kernel 2.4.x and 2.6.x
* KDE as the standard desktop with K Office and the Konqueror WWW-browser konqueror
* X Multimedia System (xmms) an MPEG-video, MP3, Ogg Vorbis Audio player and xine
* Internet connection software kppp,pppoeconf (DSL) and isdn-config
* Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)
* utilities for data recovery and system repairs, even for other operating systems
* network and security analysis tools for network administrators
* OpenOffice(TM), the GPL-developed version of the well-known StarOffice(TM) office suite
* many programming languages, development tools (including kdevelop) and libraries for developers
* in total more than 900 installed software packages with over 2000 executable user programs, utilities, and games

yeah.. just use Knoppix. It's the most popular/common.

If your friend uses a wireless card to access the internet, there's probably an 80% chance it won't work since the card uses a closed-source chipset. Then you might want to check into finding a livecd that comes with madwifi. I think DamnSmallLinux does...

Knoppix does include the madwifi drivers.

Oh, alright. I must've used an old version that didn't have them.

Knoppix is the best. I've used it a few times. It works very well if you are in a pinch. (IE: If your windows install crashed or something like that)

there's also Knoppix STD (for security tools distribution, not the other std) ;)

The only problem with that is that STD is a utilitarian distro. Not very friendly looking. If you know what you're doing, it comes preloaded with all of the security tools you need. But that was the first time I saw linux, and I was like "Oh shit".

Take along more than one LiveCD. I used Knoppix on an HP P4 once and it gave a kernel panic. So I recommend Knoppix and anything else (preferably something not Debian-based to get the idea of the differences). <a href="http://www.livecdlist.com/">This</a> site is a nice list of available LiveCDs. Have you considered something other than Linux? I found that even FreeBSD has done a LiveCD! Nice.

www.damnsmalllinux.org

you can get the embedded version and run it in QEMU, which is included in one of the releases. This allows you to run DSL without even having to reboot!

I use knoppix when I need to, haven't found anything I liked much more
although my friend swears by damn small linux.

Where could I find a FreeBSD Live distro?

Edit: Nevermind, it's on the site that you listed :thumbsup: