What Flavors of Linux Work Best for You?

Technology News introduces LiveCDs as a way to find the right Linux desktop.

“Linux … lends itself well to users with specific requirements,” said Nate Melby, an instructor at Kaplan University’s School of Information Systems and Technology. The real task is finding a distribution that suits a potential user’s needs. Live CDs that can run the newest Linux versions, running dual-boot software, let consumers use their hardware for multiple purposes, he suggested.

Preparing for Vista

PC Advisor details the steps needed to setup a computer to dual boot Windows XP and Vista. The tool used is the GParted LiveCD.

If you don’t have a partition manager, download an ISO image of the GParted Live CD from gparted.sourceforge.net and burn a CD from it. This is a free partition manager based on Linux and an essential addition to any serious PC user’s toolkit.

Ubuntu 6.10 is (almost) Out

The new Ubuntu LiveCDs are being announced on Ubuntu.com. While the link is still pointing to the 6.06.1 release, ISO images of 6.10 are currently propagating throughout the Ubuntu mirrors in a hidden folder called .pool, which happily has full read access. The new Desktop CDs (LiveCDs as they’re known around here) boot significantly quicker than previous releases, which makes them much more attractive for LiveCD tasks than they were previously, and worth the 698 megs of download.

It’s out!

CDs

DVDs

Fedora Core 6 (Zod) Live-Spins Released

Fedora Unity Project has released Fedora Core 6 LiveCDs and LiveDVDs.

A Live-Spin CD or DVD provides a “reasonably useful web browser/email/OpenOffice access,” said Jef Spaleta, long time Fedora community member. It “should be a good quick peek at what the FC6 desktops feel like … without having to do a full install.” He added, “9 out of 10 voices in my head agree: ‘Unity’s Live-Spin CD is a pretty good starting point for future live CD development.'”

Mandriva 2007 Review

This Mandriva 2007 review at Linux Forums has a short section involving the LiveCD install of the new Mandriva release.

I booted on the Mandriva One CD, noticed nice boot splash sequences, answered one too many questions about my favorite language, keyboard layout, home country, time zone, favorite time synchronization method, I signed a user license agreement and told Mandriva One I didn’t want to activate the 3D effects (I didn’t, because I wanted to keep that as a surprise for when it would be running from the hard-drive).