Rating some LiveCD operating systems..

[Joe]

Yup. In my time of semi-downtime here, I'm playing with some LiveCD operating systems I have laying around.

1. Winternals ERD Commander 2005
It's meant to be a repair tool for Windows (the only OS that would have an entire OS written just to fix the former..) so it has no play-around toys, but it did have firefox (which performed poorly, find kept jumping up while I posted) which was a plus, except it's problem.

2. Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog Live CD
The most software-packed, I think. I used it for a few hours last night to browse the forums, but it had a horrible resolution (600x480) and there was nothing I could do to fix that. But it did include both xchat, gaim, and firefox, so it was pretty decent.

3. Ubuntu Breezy Badger Live CD
One of it's packages failed a MD5sum check at boot so it claimed to be corrupt. Oh well.

4. Damn Small Linux
This one wins by far. It has a nice Window manager with some cool docklets (the bottom one is still beyond me what it does..). It also included XMMS and supported my DVD drive (I forgot automounting of CDs was an Ubuntu-specific feature, so it took me a few minutes to figure it out), so I was able to play some music without my harddrive working. It's got a decent resolution (I've seen bigger (smaller?) but it's a hell of a lot better than Ubuntu).

5. Puppy Linux
Nice, easy-to-use GUI (that Windows 95 impersonator WM). You're able to actually exit the Window manager and return to the command prompt, unlike DSL, and return by use of startx. It's installation wizard did quite a good job of explaining each step, but it wouldn't format the disk for you. Two major flaws: It didn't detect my network card automatically, nor offer any obvious way to do that, and it didn't have a way to open a command line in X.

[iago]

Here's a pretty good list of LiveCD security distros (pop it in, and you can start hacking):

http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/323

I especially liked Auditor and Knoppix-STD

[Super_X]

Here's a pretty good list of LiveCD security distros (pop it in, and you can start hacking):

http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/323

I especially liked Auditor and Knoppix-STD

When ever I try to boot my Knoppix-STD it freezes and the CD ROM drive unmounts so it kills the boot.

[Joe]

Tested Puppy Linux.

[MyndFyre]

the only OS that would have an entire OS written just to fix the former.

Joe, you're the only retard who would break Windows so bad that you'd need to use ERD commander to use it, but yet still uses Linux.  If Linux was widespread, there would be 500 distros of repair discs as well, because retards would break *those*.  The good news is, we have one operating system dominating the user market, and consequently only need one repair kit.

2. Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog Live CD
The most software-packed, I think. I used it for a few hours last night to browse the forums, but it had a horrible resolution (600x480) and there was nothing I could do to fix that. But it did include both xchat, gaim, and firefox, so it was pretty decent.

Wow...  600x480 sucks balls.

3. Ubuntu Breezy Badger Live CD
One of it's packages failed a MD5sum check at boot so it claimed to be corrupt. Oh well.

That means you're broken, not that the distro itself sucks.

4. Damn Small Linux
This one wins by far. It has a nice Window manager with some cool docklets (the bottom one is still beyond me what it does..). It also included XMMS and supported my DVD drive (I forgot automounting of CDs was an Ubuntu-specific feature, so it took me a few minutes to figure it out), so I was able to play some music without my harddrive working. It's got a decent resolution (I've seen bigger (smaller?) but it's a hell of a lot better than Ubuntu).

I've liked DSL in the past, although like other Linux distros it generally doesn't support my hardware out of the box (which is unfortunate; a year or two ago it would have been bleeding edge.  It's not anymore).

5. Puppy Linux
Nice, easy-to-use GUI (that Windows 95 impersonator WM). You're able to actually exit the Window manager and return to the command prompt, unlike DSL, and return by use of startx. It's installation wizard did quite a good job of explaining each step, but it wouldn't format the disk for you. Two major flaws: It didn't detect my network card automatically, nor offer any obvious way to do that, and it didn't have a way to open a command line in X.

Why would you try to install from a live CD?  Why not an... install CD?

I still think that Fedora Core has the most competent window manager and installation system (it actually picked up all of my notebook's hardware last time -- well, with the exception of the Wifi adapter) of the various Linux distros that I've used and/or attempted, which include SuSE, Redhat, FC, Ubuntu, DSL, and Slackware (I also have a copy of Solaris 7 for x86 somewhere around the house).