LiveCD
A LiveCD is an operating system (usually containing other software as well) stored on a bootable CD-ROM that can be executed from it, without installation on a hard drive. The system returns to its previous OS when the LiveCD is ejected and the computer is rebooted.
Some LiveCDs come with an installation utility launchable from a desktop icon that can optionally install the system on a hard drive or USB keydrive. Most LiveCDs can access the information on internal and/or external harddrives, diskettes and USB Flash memories.
Most LiveCDs contain a system based on the Linux kernel, but there are also LiveCDs based on other operating systems, such as FreeBSD or Microsoft Windows, though the legal status of LiveCDs based on Windows code is dubious. The first OS to support LiveCD operations appears to have been BeOS, which could be brought to a full desktop from a CD-ROM as far back as R3, in 1998.
The syslinux utility is used to boot Linux based LiveCDs as well as Linux floppies. On a PC, a bootable CD generally conforms to the El Torito specification which treats a special file on the disc (possibly hidden) as a floppy diskette image. Many Linux based LiveCDs use a compressed filesystem image, often with the cloop compressed loopback driver.
Mini-LiveCDs
A Mini-LiveCD, also known as a bootable business card, is a LiveCD this is small enough to fit on a CD-ROM that has been cut, pressed, or molded to the size and shape of a business card. Mini-LiveCDs are able to hold about 50 MB.
Emulation
There are number of emulators on the market that can be used to try a LiveCD without the need to burn it to a CD or boot it on the computer. The most widely supported i386 emulator is VMware. Qemu and Bochs support additional architectures as well as the i386 architecture, though due to their different method of emulation, they are significantly slower than VMware.
List of LiveCDs
- Main article List of LiveCDs
BSD based
- DragonFly BSD [1] (http://www.dragonflybsd.org/main/download.cgi)
- FreeSBIE (Based on FreeBSD)
- Frenzy mini-CD (Based on FreeBSD)
- NetBSD - unofficial livecd images made of NetBSD 2.0 Beta (ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/xtraeme/) and NetBSD 1.6 (ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/iso/1.6/i386live.iso.bz2)
Linux based
- Damn Small Linux for a business card-sized CD.
- Gnoppix [2] (http://www.gnoppix.org/) (Debian GNU/Linux)
- Knoppix
- MandrakeMove
- ROCK Linux LiveCD Target for PPC (in 2004, featuring a Desktop Environment (KDE) as well as a development environment with gcc, make et al)
- SuSE Live-CD
Microsoft Windows based
Others
External links
- Live Linux Wiki: a wiki about LiveCD Linux distributions (http://www.seedwiki.com/page.cfm?doc=Live%20Linux&wikiid=4148)
- Bootable CDROM HowTo (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bootdisk-HOWTO/cd-roms.html)
- Long list of LiveCDs at the Knoppix Wiki (http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/KnoppixCustomizations)
de:Live-CD es:CDVivo fr:LiveCD it:Live CD nl:LiveCD ru:Live-CD