News from the LiveCD World
LinuxHaxor.net has a list of useful tasks for the GParted LiveCD.
We all fill up our hard-drives from time to time, but thanks to Gnome GParted, rearranging disk partitions isn’t as terrifying as it used to be. In fact, armed with a GParted Live CD, there’s a swathe of disk space fiddling jobs I can tackle without gnawing my fingers to the bone:
The Defensive Computing blog at CNET News has a great introduction to LiveCDs and their practical uses.
Now, another emphatic endorsement – all Windows users should have a Linux Live CD, and, know how to use it.
Tectonic takes a look at the new release of Puppy Linux.
Its been been six months since Puppy Linux 3.01 was released and today Barry Kauler announced Puppy 4.00, aka Dingo. Clocking in at a minimal 87MB download, Puppy 4.00 is a lightweight desktop Linux alternative ideal for low-end machines, or for users who want a little less clutter and more speed from their desktop.
Sun has released the free OpenSolaris LiveCD. Includes all the interesting parts of Solaris, including ZFS, DTrace, containers, etc. Also, you can sign up to have them ship you a CD for free.
Highlighted by the latest Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter (#88), there’s a great tutorial in the Ubuntu forums for transforming an Ubuntu install into a custom LiveCD/DVD.
This HOWTO is about making a live CD/DVD from the main system on your hard drive. This might be desired if you have customized your system and want to have it on CD. It can be useful also if you want to create a recovery CD from scratch, as you can make a minimal system using debootstrap and transform it into a live CD.
Red Hat Magazine has an interview with Jeremy Katz of Fedora, about Live CDs.
In Fedora 9, one of the new features is persistence for Live USBs. Based on the impression I get, this is a feature that is in high demand and probably has quite a number of uses. Where did your motivation for working on this feature come from; was it the demand from the users, or were you scratching your own itch?
Linux.com has a quick review of Puppeee.
Puppy Linux (and, by extension, Puppeee) was written from scratch with two goals in mind: speed and ease of use. Puppy Linux is, indeed, lightning fast — even when running on low-end machines like the Eee PC.
After a long wait since 5.1.1, KNOPPIX 5.3.1 is out as an official public release.
HowtoForge resets the root password of a Linux system with Knoppix.
LifeHacker has an excerpt from the second Knoppix Hacks Book, and asks for comments about everyone’s favorite LiveCD.
After a long time in development, Slax 6 is finally out.
CLICK has news that DSL will get Firefox 2.
Firefox in DSL will move from the current version 1 to the GTK 1 version of Firefox 2. Thats a big deal because a lot of Web sites require at least Firefox 1.5 for full functionality. It means, for one thing that itll be possible to use Google Docs and Spreadsheets with Damn Small Linux.
The folks at Kubuntu have remastered their 7.10 release LiveCD with KDE 4.0.
Ars Technica’s open source journal has news and links to running a modified Xubuntu 7.10 off a USB flash drive on an Eee laptop. The installer still works too, so installing permanently is an option.
HowtoForge has instructions for building a custom LiveCD out of an Ubuntu based system.
This guide shows how you can create a Live-CD from your Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon or Linux Mint 4.0 system with a tool called remastersys. Remastersys is available in the Linux Mint romeo repository. You can customize your Ubuntu/Linux Mint system and then let remastersys create an iso image of it which you can then burn onto a CD/DVD.
Phoronix has screenshots from a Fedora 8 Live session.
Red Hat Magazine has instructions for making a Fedora 8 bootable USB flash drive.
I am writing this article on a Windows laptop borrowed from a friend. But fear not, dear reader, for I have not abandoned my free software principles. For while the hard disk of this laptop contains the Windows operating system, I have used a USB key as the boot device, and the laptop is currently running Fedora 8, codenamed “Werewolf.”
openSUSE 10.3 LiveCDs are now available, and like others before them, they can now be used to install an openSUSE system.
From today on the live version of openSUSE 10.3 is available as GNOME or KDE Live CD. Both contain the same software as the 1 CD installation versions from launch time – just as live system.
Phoronix has a review and pics of the first development release of OpenSolaris Project Indiana.
After downloading this ISO (the Developer Preview is only 629MB), the image can be burned to a disc and immediately booted. Project Indiana incorporates a “Slim Install” LiveCD for x86 systems. Just like Ubuntu, Fedora Live, and a number of other Linux distributions, you can boot to this CD and start using it without ever touching the contents of your hard drive.
Lifehacker reviews the latest release of the lightweight Puppy Linux.
Booting Linux from an external drive with the applications and settings of your choice has never been easier after this weeks release of Puppy Linux 3.0. Like Damn Small Linux, Puppy is small enough to fit on a USB thumb drive, and like Knoppix , you can boot it from CD.