Comments on: Why you want a Linux Live CD

I make a case that all Windows users should keep a Linux Live CD at their beck and call.

[CmdrRickHunter]

I live and die by linux liveCDs.

You mentioned NTFS support. I have actually had a live CD which could read a harddrive that was too corrupted for window's own drivers to read! Saved a lot of data that way.

That being said, don't be a loser like me... BACK YOUR DATA UP!

[Mad_Ivan]

I must respectfully submit that it _is_ possible to run Windows XP (or at least a reasonable subset of it) solely from a CD. Please look at BartPE (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/); I use it all the time to check out systems that I believe are seriously infected with viruses and other malware. Granted, it takes a bit of sophistication to create a useful BartPE CD (i.e., with anti-virus software), but it _is_ real Windows.

That being said, the author has the right idea - *EVERY* user of even minimal skill should have an ``alternate´´ bootable environment on CD to use in case of emergency.

- JDB

[mhinnewyork]

Ivan - I agree about BartPE, but the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows is based on BartPE and I've had very good experiences with UBCD so I chose to focus on that. Michael Horowitz

[3rdalbum]

Ubuntu actually gave me the means to remove zlob.downloader from my father's computer. It can't be removed from within the running Windows instance as "the file is busy". Yeah, any other operating system with NTFS read/write drivers could have done the same, but Ubuntu was the one I had at hand :-)

[jacko9388]

I wasn't too impressed with the article. Actually I didn't even read the entire thing. I know next to nothing about MS Windows XP / Vista in terms of actual use since I haven't owned a MS Windows computer since 2003- the last I owned ran MS Windows ME. However, I do know (although next to nothing about) MS Windows can run from CD if something like BartPE is used. I take it that CNET is just coming to grips with the fact GNU/Linux exists! Why else bother putting out such an article? Everybody knows this little LiveCD thing exists already. Welcome to the world! Anyway- it is a shame that people don't double check this kind of article with someone in the know before they publish it/blog it.

[mhinnewyork]

I'm not impressed with you either. UBCD is at the end of the article. UBCD for Windows is based on BartPE. And, I don't work for CNET, their bloggers are independent. For better or worse, CNET does not offer any input to what I write. And, I wrote about Linux earlier. It's a shame CNET lets people like you make comments, but without one of George Carlins famous words, they don't delete comments. Michael Horowitz

[danneauxs]

Seriously "everybody"??????? Not even close. Articles like this are not for the FEW in the know; they are for people who come to CNET for advice and to LEARN. I've "known" about liveCD's for years but haven't looked at them since almost their inception. They were trick and buggy and hardware sensititve. Just recently have I tried them again; admittedly as an alternative to getting an older computer set up for a parent to surf with, but the point is that though I've burnt 15+ different ISO's trying to find the one I like the best it never occured to me to give copies of the one I choose to friends and family to *** use as a back up operating system ****. I'd probably take one with me to fix someones problem but if they had their own and booted live to play with it it might save me a trip. It's good advice and it's good updated information for people who only know the BIG 2 - windows and mac platforms. Assuming everyone knows something is just plain ignorant and heck snobbish. There's always someone who could benefit .

[JImmyJungJung]

Linux Live CDs rock. Only way to go man.
www.FireMe.To/udi

[alt117]

I wasn't that impressed by jacko's comment. Actually, I didn't even read the whole thing. After the first line, I figured it was by some know it all, too cool for CNET, but still read and comment to CNET troll.

Can someone tell me if I was right?

[mhinnewyork]

Wow, *great* rebuttal to a heckler. Any standup comic would be jealous. Michael Horowitz

[rdj262]

I didn't mean to switch to Linux....
As an XP power user, I was happy with my exceedingly tweeked and very stable XP box. But a few weeks back, on June 30th (when MS decided to stop selling XP) I ran across an article on easily creating a dual-boot system with both XP and Linux. Since I was not too happy about the idea of having to switch to Vista in the near future, I figured I'd play around with Linux a little - just for future reference in case I still didn't want to use Vista... So I downloaded, burned to CD, and installed Ubuntu. The whole process was done in less than 30 minutes. Linux was SO easy and elegant (yes elegant) I couldn't believe it! Firefox 3 was the same. Open office would open my MS Office docs. Picasa managed my photos. For every bit of software I used in XP, there was a solution (often better) for Linux. The GUI can be made to look better than Vista (much cooler effects, shiny buttons, etc...) with only a few mouse clicks - and without being a strain on the system! (Linux, fully loaded, takes about 250 meg of RAM) Funny thing happened over the next few days: I found myself booting into Linux (Kubuntu) more than XP. As I type this, Linux has been running for four days. XP? What XP? I can't believe I didn't do this sooner!

[bjrosen]

The term LiveCD is dated, these days the best way to do it is to install the LiveCD to a USB stick, this is a much more powerful tool especially if you add an overlay which allows you to add software and data to the USB stick. The advantages of the USB FLASH approach are,

1) It's tiny, you can carry it on your keychain.
2) It's much faster than a CD
3) You can add additional software that is useful for system recovery. On my Fedora USB stick I've added the following,
parted and gparted, these are partition editors. parted is command line, gparted is the GUI version.
Xemacs, this is the best text editor there is.
dd, this allows you do duplicate partitions, even Windows partitions.
sys_basher, this is a hardware exerciser. It's useful for testing the system.

In addition I have my secure shell keys so that I can access any of my systems from anywhere in the world.

Here is the Link to the Fedora on USB Wiki
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLiveCD/USBHowTo