LWN: Comments on "Live CDs Part I: Why Do We Care?"

Live CDs Part I: Why Do We Care?

mmacok — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 11:19:41 +0000

My personal favourite desktop replacement is PCLinuxOS.
It is what Mandriva should look like but more user-friendly and solid.

Live CDs Part I: Why Do We Care?

tzafrir — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 15:15:13 +0000

Actually the equivalent of a boot floppy is a bootable USB disk. Unlike a live CD, you can modify a USB disk.

Live CDs Part I: Why Do We Care?

Randakar — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 12:16:15 +0000

Don't forget the new Ubuntu Live CD. It may sound too obvious but that's exactly why you might forget :-D

Live CDs Part I: Why Do We Care?

vonbrand — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 14:14:05 +0000

A personal favorite of mine is INSERT, a credit-card sized CD for system rescue. Yes, it is part of the "Ultimate Boot CD", but I've never needed more than INSERT itself.

Live CDs Part I: Why Do We Care?

fmyhr — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 13:21:03 +0000

I've used and liked SystemRescueCd:

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

Might want to include that in your review.

Live CDs Part I: Why Do We Care?

maks — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 12:21:18 +0000

I miss grml in aboves review:
grml is specialised for administrators with focus on texttools. On the usual recovery scenario i have no mouse lying around, but i want to get quickly to the zone trouble. grml delivers excellent default configurations for zsh or mutt and their grml2hd installer is nicely scriptable.
http://www.grml.org/

Live CDs Part I: Why Do We Care?

alfille — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 11:30:21 +0000

Another reason for Live CDs -- separating software and hardware problems.

I've been writing what is essentially a hardware driver (a filesystem for Dallas 1-wire devices -- http://owfs.sf.net). When people have trouble getting things to work, it's hard to figure out if it's the kernel modules, the software, or their hardware.

I created a minidistribution based on DamnSmallLinux with my program in a known-good configuration, and included it as one of my downloads. If that works, then the problem is cut in half (and users can see the function and are motivated to continue).