who does the best live cd?

[fuscia]

i've tried puppy, DSL, slax, mepis, dreamlinux and zenwalk. so far, i liked dreamlinux and DSL the best. couldn't get my wireless (ipw2915) working in any of them (don't really know what to do for that in a live cd, though).

[arox]

Slax is fast and can be copied to RAM so you can copy data from CD even if you have only one CD drive

systemrescuecd is good for backups (partimage)

I use gparted Live CD for partitioning

For normal use any Live CD which support my network card is good

[dca]

Out of the one(s) listed, SimplyMEPIS was the best for me. I run that on my wife's PC because it was the only one to auto-recognize an ol' D-Link PCI WiFi card out of the box...

[fuscia]

i tried kanotix a little earlier and was able to use my wireless. unfortunately, the picture got garbled and i had to quit.

[fuscia]

well, here i am posting from zenlive (just thought i'd say that before the novelty wears off).

[Rumor]

The best liveCD's I have tried have been:
1. Freespire - Seriously, it is *very* good
2. PCLinuxOS - P93A Big Daddy
3. Knoppix

[RAV TUX]

Top 10 IMHO

1. Knoppix(CD/DVD)
2. Aquamorph
3. Zenlive
4. Helix
5. dyne:bolic
6. Quantian(DVD)
7. Xplora(DVD)
8. Musix
9. X-Evian
10. DeadCD

[nalmeth]

Elive Revolution is really cool:
http://www.elivecd.org/gb/Download/Stable/

Gparted for partitioning (monkey-barrel loads of fun! ;) )
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

Kororra XGL liveCD, not sure about situation with newer CD's, look for torrents of older version if the new one doesn't give you 3D drivers:
http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/5476

Sabayon - gentoo based, also sports AIGLX/XGL + Beryl
http://www.sabayonlinux.org/

Supergamer - very cool:
http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/6136

OR use Reconstructor to make your own ubuntu-based liveCDs:
http://reconstructor.aperantis.com/index.php

[mips]

Knoppix for functionality.

[Minyaliel]

1. Elive
2. Puppy
3. PCLinuxOS
4. Mepis

These I use regularly, and I love them. Elive's come to stay on my HD =)

[kopilo]

Puppy just hangs on my computer when I try to live boot it.

The ones I've had the least amout of issues live booting.
Mepis
FreeSpire
Xubuntu
hal91 Floppy Linux
DSL (all though it doesn't like my optical mouse)

[basketcase]

Knoppix for me, I always fall back to it when I need a live-cd

[RAV TUX]

Knoppix for me, I always fall back to it when I need a live-cd

I always rely on Knoppix when I need a reliable Linux OS installed on my hard drive

Knoppix is the best live CD and Linux distro to install on your hard drive, Knoppix does both KDE and Gnome the best, and it is also the fastest.

[fuscia]

i've now tried suse and pclinuxos (actually, it was something called 'rails' and i didn't bother reading about it, so i have no idea what it is). to date, only pclinux and kanotix work with my wireless. dreamlinux looked so good, i could forgive it not working with my wireless. knoppix lasted about 20 seconds.

[fuscia]

posting from the sabayon mini live. this is the best one i've tried so far, by far. wireless works beautifully. my wide screen resolution was detected. the stunner - the live cd is faster than my ubuntu installation. i'm tempted to dual boot, but i've got a feeling this is not a stroll in the wood on a hot summer night, by delius, for a young fawn in the clearing of brazen anticipation.

[SirPecanGum]

PCLinuxOS is a very good all-rounder and installs very well. Gentoo was surprisingly good live but perhaps only because I didn't expect it to work at all and Sabayon is a lot of fun as a live CD with XGL. Knoppix is probably my favorite though.

[SirPecanGum]

posting from the sabayon mini live.

Sabayon is great live but when I install it (I'm dual booting with it now - mini version this time) it is one error after another for me. Considerably slower than Ubuntu, no default choice (that I can see) of XGL at login as with Ubuntu and far less community support than Ubuntu. I'd say Gentoo is better if you have the time...

[fuscia]

yeah, i'm thinking sabayon might stay a live option for me, pecan. i'm taking xgl for a spin now, for the first time (<---i hate myself for that one). it's in a class with fake breasts.

[SunnyRabbiera]

Mepis for me, Mepis on live CD is the best if you want a good "world tour" of linux before commiting to it.
I commited at least three people to linux thanks to mepis's live CD.
A close second is PClinux, I just love its live CD!
A good third is of course Ubuntu now it has an installer on the live CD, a bit tempermental compared to mepis or PClinux
A fourth is knoppix, a great live CD yes but if you want to install it well...
A fifth will have to be Linspire.... nuff said.

[fuscia]

well, i was wrong. my 'upgrade-to-edgy-oh-****-back-to-dapper-whoa!-WTF???' incident turned into me using the sabayon live cd and then installing it. pretty nice, so far. the installation is something kaspar hauser could handle (even without his sentence). so far, i haven't done much, but i'll get around to it.

[RAV TUX]

well, i was wrong. my 'upgrade-to-edgy-oh-****-back-to-dapper-whoa!-WTF???' incident turned into me using the sabayon live cd and then installing it. pretty nice, so far. the installation is something kaspar hauser could handle (even without his sentence). so far, i haven't done much, but i'll get around to it.

Awesome,....I have installed the Wolvix Hunter 1.0.5 CD....not for everyone but I find Wolvix impressive.

[fuscia]

holy crap! i just reinstalled edgy. what a relief to be home again. trying out sabayon really gave me an appreciation of the idiot user friendliness of ubuntu. sabayon does look great, though, an it's a great live cd. even their site looks great.

[limitedmage]

Auditor Security Collection >:D cuz with this I can hack into the school computer and find the password for Windows so I can install games

[vizual_eyez1]

I like debian. I'm still trying out different ones to see which I think is best. I'm in the process of trying out sabayon and mandriva 2007. I keep reading that knoppix is a good one, so maybe I'll try that too.

[3rdalbum]

Copland is pretty good these days as a Live CD!

[tommcd]

Zenwalk just came out with a new live CD that has some aditional utilities for system rescue and stuff:

http://zenlive.zenwalk.org/

I have zenwalk installed on my system and like it very much. I use it more than ubuntu these days.

[karellen]

knoppix
pclinuxos
dreamlinux
linux mint

[Buzzygirl]

In my albeit limited experience with live distros, here are my choices, in order of preference:

- SimplyMEPIS (6.05)
- Ubuntu
- KNOPPIX (5.1)

I'd certainly like to try out more live distros, particularly ones that aren't based on Debian, just to see what they are like.

[Nils Olav]

In my albeit limited experience with live distros, here are my choices, in order of preference:

- SimplyMEPIS (6.05)
- Ubuntu
- KNOPPIX (5.1)

I'd certainly like to try out more live distros, particularly ones that aren't based on Debian, just to see what they are like.

syntax error

[kazuya]

simply mepis / Linux Mint
sabayon
wolvix
knoppix
pclinuxos
zenwalk live
elive
dreamlinux

Mepis is still my first choice for functionality.
Sabayon for beauty, functionality, and show off linux fancy capabilities.

[K.Mandla]

This is probably going to sound dumb, but I really like a funny little Dapper-based live CD called PUD GNU/Linux (http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=03899#0) that boots to an IceWM desktop. It's small, it's Ubuntu-based and it doesn't bog down my machines when I need to tackle a problem from a live environment. I used to keep a DSL 3.1 RC disc around just for fixing things, but I've thrown it out since I tried that one.

[bravemosquito]

I think there's no way to compare LiveCDs with PuppyLinux at this stage. Except Gentoo's netinstall and LFS (which has a lack of 64bit version, but this is fixable through 'linux64' command)

This is probably going to sound dumb, but I really like a funny little Dapper-based live CD called PUD GNU/Linux (http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=03899#0) that boots to an IceWM desktop. It's small, it's Ubuntu-based and it doesn't bog down my machines when I need to tackle a problem from a live environment. I used to keep a DSL 3.1 RC disc around just for fixing things, but I've thrown it out since I tried that one.

Has this distro an English version?

[ItsGambit]

1) Knoppix (@ home)
2) Knoppix STD (@ work)

[STREETURCHINE]

Zenwalk just came out with a new live CD that has some aditional utilities for system rescue and stuff:

http://zenlive.zenwalk.org/

I have zenwalk installed on my system and like it very much. I use it more than ubuntu these days.

zenwalk gets my vote,
and i also have it installed and use it more than ubuntu,
only because it is a lot faster than ubuntu,but then i have a lot of fluff on ubuntu edgy

[fuscia]

i've been trying pclinuxos today (tr4, i think). pretty good and very fast when loaded into ram. the default mail client is thunderbird, instead of kmail, which i don't understand, but other than that, if i weren't perfectly happy with kde-core in feisty, i'd install it.

[twogunmickey]

Just putting in my 2 cents. Puppy Linux has to be my favorite live distro. I've tried may of the other Live Distros including other lightweights in the 50 to 80 MB range, and in my opinion Puppy is in a league of it's own. Offering so much function while using so little resources.

[tommcd]

zenwalk gets my vote,
and i also have it installed and use it more than ubuntu,
only because it is a lot faster than ubuntu,but then i have a lot of fluff on ubuntu edgy

I also have zenwalk installed, and I also use it more than ubuntu. Zenwalk strikes a nice balance between "hardcore linux", i.e., debian, slackware, arch, gentoo; and "noob-friendly linux", i.e., *buntu, pclinuxos, mepis, et.al. It is very hard to beat imo.

[Tux Aubrey]

Puppy (there's a new version and a couple of derivatives) is very impressive for so small a footprint. The fact that I can save all my settings onto the HDD or a USB stick is great. Does zenwalk do this? I also like elive - E17 is so pretty.

[Pobega]

I personally like SystemRescueCD, since I only use LiveCDs to salvage systems. I don't really operate off of LiveCDs.

I like that it gives you Window Maker too!

What I don't like is how fast X eats resources compared to other LiveCDs; But that's not a problem since there are more than enough command line programs for salvaging systems.

And the other great thing is that it fits on a USB drive, so it's easily portable (Hell, I carry my SysRescUSB on my keychain), and booting from a USB drive is generally faster than booting from a CD. And less noisy, too!

[phidia]

holy crap! i just reinstalled edgy. what a relief to be home again. trying out sabayon really gave me an appreciation of the idiot user friendliness of ubuntu. sabayon does look great, though, an it's a great live cd. even their site looks great.

I tried sabayon 3.26 mini ed. a while back and with beryl and the nvidia driver auto configured it's very nice.
I still prefer ubuntu though. I don't think anyone here mentioned NimbleX. It fits in 200Mb and yet has kde and all the media codecs setup. Plus it has synaptic. I've always liked slack distros-strangely slack11 doesn't even install for me-not with the 2.6 test kernel (slack is still using the 2.4 kernel by default) So NimbleX gets me slack with the 2.6.16 kernel and lots of stuff preconfigured.