Which LiveCDs would make the top 10?

[AgeGap]

I would like to run a few distros from CDs. I have Ubuntu installed and have run Kubuntu from a LiveCD. Has anybody got any other suggestions? Need to be able to download it onto CD (not DVD).
Thanks

[RayG]

Check out http://distrowatch.com and http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

I tried probably a dozen LiveCDs before I settled on Ubuntu, which is now installed on my primary system.

eta: If you already have Ubuntu installed you shouldn't have to run Kubuntu from a live CD. Just install the required components and then switch between the two using sessions.

RayG

[ddt]

I would like to run a few distros from CDs. I have Ubuntu installed and have run Kubuntu from a LiveCD. Has anybody got any other suggestions? Need to be able to download it onto CD (not DVD).
Thanks

What do you want it for? When it's in order to play with Linux to see how it works, you can also consider installing VMWare and running a Linux distro in a virtual machine.

If it's for carrying around for rescue sysadmin work, I'd say look if there is one that fits on a credit-card size mini-CD. I carry one around in my wallet, forgot though which distro it is.

Some of the distros mentioned on the second link Ray G gave are only for firewall work - e.g., monowall fits on a floppy you put in a diskless 386 you use as firewall.

The first and most famous live-CD is, of course, Knoppix. I was thinking of plugging ATmission; it's by my previous employer, and I did a tiny bit of work on it too :). But I get the impression it hasn't been maintained for a while. The cool thing about it is that it uses the cowloop file system (cow = copy on write), which overlays a memory-mapped file system over an existing read-only CD-file system. That way, any configuration file can simply be changed - and you can even preserve those changes on a USB stick or so for a next run. Other live-distros, e.g. Knoppix, relied at that time on scores of symbolic links for those configuration files you might want to change. Maybe in the meantime other live-distros have picked up this idea too, I don't know.

[AgeGap]

I am pretty new to PCs in general and Linux in particular. Just messing around seeing what different stuff has to offer. Also got a stack of blank CD-Rs.
What I don't get are the layers of Linux.
i.e. OpenGeu based on Ubuntu based on Debian which uses the Linux kernel.
Will try Knoppix.
Thanks to both.

[RayG]

Just messing around seeing what different stuff has to offer.

Best way to do that is try a few distros and see which ones you like. Although I haven't tried Knoppix in a couple years, I didn't really like it that much (way too many options/applications), so never actually installed it. I loved the clean, uncluttered approach of BeatrIX, but it's been discontinued.

That distrowatch website is a goldmine of information.

RayG

[ddt]

What I don't get are the layers of Linux.
i.e. OpenGeu based on Ubuntu based on Debian which uses the Linux kernel.


That can be confusing, yes. A short history to explain it.

In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs invented a new operating system, UNIX. That was all still command-line stuff. Everybody technical liked it and began to use it. Companies like Sun and HP started to use it for their computers. UNIX went commercial and closed source.

In the 1980s, the MIT created a graphical interface called X, or X11. Of course it ran on UNIX. It wasn't as slick as modern desktops, but it is still used as the base for graphical desktops in Linux: GNOME and KDE are built on top of X.

Meanwhile, Richard Stallman, a programmer at MIT, said: I don't like closed source software; when a program has a bug, I want the source code so I can fix it. Therefore, he started the GNU project with the aim to re-create UNIX as open source software. His project succeeded in re-creating all UNIX command-line tools and even in making a compiler - a program that translates source code to an executable program.

In 1991, a Finnish CS student, Linus Torvalds, made for fun a kernel that behaves like a UNIX kernel. The kernel is the lowest layer of the operating system: it gives the programs access to the peripherals, and it makes it possible to run multiple programs simultaneously. Linus' kernel, together with GNU's command line tools, were an open source replacement for UNIX. Sometimes you'll hear Stallman say it should be called "GNU/Linux".

People liked Linux. They ported all kind of other open-source programs to Linux: X of course, mail programs, web servers and browsers, etc. However, only skilled people could get a Linux system up and running, and get together the right versions of all these programs.

Some of these skilled people decided to make distributions: a set of all kinds of useful programs put together. The distributor ensured that all programs on a distribution indeed fit together, so the user didn't have to worry about that. The companies RedHat and SuSE (now a subsidiary of Novell) were founded on this idea. Debian, another popular distribution, was founded as a community non-profit project.

Over time, distributions grew enormously in size as more and more interesting programs got added. The success of Linux also motivated people to start more ambitious projects to make it a full desktop system. My first Linux install was a 1995 Slackware distribution of 50 floppies; now a RedHat Fedora distribution occupies the most part of a DVD. A desktop distribution at least contains two different desktops (GNOME and KDE), OpenOffice, the Firefox browser, the Thunderbird mailer, some video and audio playing software, and the Photoshop imitation Gimp.

As the size of distributions grew, their complexity also grew. A distribution consists of packages, each containing some programs and/or some libraries. It is a hell of a lot of work to maintain such a collection of packages - e.g., Debian has over 6,000 packages. And they come from all different kind of projects, which mostly don't make their program only for Linux but also for UNIX and Windows. So most people who want to make a specialized distribution, decide to base their distribution on either Debian or RedHat/Fedora (Fedora is the free variant of RedHat), and only tweak those parts they find important for their specialization. A popular example of this is Ubuntu: it is based on Debian, so people who want more programs than those in the standard Ubuntu offering can use the Debian packages.

As to "Debian using the Linux kernel": meanwhile, the GNU project has built a kernel of their own; Debian can also use this one, IIRC. And Debian can also use the kernel from the BSD-project, another open-source UNIX variant.

[AgeGap]

Thanks, a bit clearer now.
I have just got a live CD of OpenGeu and am using the moonlight theme. It looks really good looking. I could even start a thread called "I am shallow enough to use OpenGEU".:)
Found this link (http://www.pctipsbox.com/top-10-ubuntu-based-distributions/) while browsing. Not sure about Christian Ubuntu at No 9.

[Blackadder]

I think Live in Wembley '86 from Queen would make the top 10 of live CDs

[AgeGap]

I think Live in Wembley '86 from Queen would make the top 10 of live CDs
I think Blackadder is serious. Can't see a smiley in your post.:D
I meant Live CD as opposed to live album. Worship at the altar of Wikipedia!

ETA: Just booted from CD with Live in Wembley '86 from Queen. Better than Apple, Microsoft and Linux combined.