Linux Live CDs: A Convenient Approach to Personal Computing

The Linux platform for computing is difficult to understand for an average personal computer user. The traditional Microsoft Windows Operating System users especially find it inconvenient with the excessive amount of options Linux presents.

There have been numerous cases for and against Linux desktop usage for personal computing. Individual users have some very diverse requirements from a computing environment. As against a business setup, where the tasks are well defined and laid out, individuals users tend to use computers for very different and, often, changing needs.

The choice of an operating system often results from the perceived ease with which these tasks can be accomplished. I would like to focus on Linux Live CDs as a way for an individual computer user to simplify computing.

Live CDs started out as a marketing tool for different Linux “distributions” (or distro). A distribution in simple terms is a customized version of Linux. It is created by compiling and packaging software components geared towards a certain type of usage. All Linux varieties we see are certain distributions developed by a group of people or companies. They can choose the distribution to be commercial or free, general purpose or highly specialized.

A “Live CD” offers a way to boot your system using the CD/DVD/USB media.

You just pop in the CD and start your system. The entire Operating system resides on the CD media. (It could be a DVD, USB flash drive, even your iPod). The operating software is read off the CD and loaded in the computer memory. You don’t have to install and load the operating system through the hard drive. Certain Live CD distros need disk capacity as low as 50 megs for the complete system to reside in.

Live CDs are considered to be slow because reading data off the CD drive is slower than reading it off the hard drive. This is one of the reasons why we find Live CD usage for day to day computing to be rare. Recently higher CD drive throughput has made it possible to use Live CDs for certain tasks.

How to create a working Live CD?

There are multiple ways of doing that, and most Linux systems that offer Live CD distros describe very clearly how to create the live CD. Generally one has to download an “image” file from the distro’s Web site. An image file is a compressed set of files that have to be written on to the live CD for it to work. It usually has an .iso extension but it could also have other extensions. An image file cannot be directly written onto the CD, special CD writing software is needed. There are loads of commercial ones like Alcohol or Nero for Windows. My favorite one (for linux) is X-CD-Roast. It has an easy graphical interface. On an Ubuntu box (Ubuntu is a very popular Linux distro) this capability is within the operating system, all one needs to do is right click download ISO image and choose “save on disc”, which invokes the Nautilus CD burner, where one just has to chose “save”, and you get a working bootable CD!

Live CDs offer a very obvious advantage: You can have multiple operating systems, and boot off any you wish. Live CDs makes it possible to have multiple operating systems for ready use. The low costs associated with external media (a 700 Meg CDs, USB drives, DVDs) makes it possible for one to have more than one OS available for use. I have about 11 Live CDs that I use for various purposes.

For my usual tasks like going online, document editing or using email clients I use Knoppix Live CD. It automatically detects my NTFS partitions and Network cards, has the best hardware detection capabilities in all “distros” I’ve worked with. General Knoppix distro release 5.1.1 has a lot of improvements like faster write speed to NTFS partitions. (I have a Windows box which I rarely use.). Initially when I started with Knoppix, I did have some problems connecting to the internet. Some Indian ISPs block off requests from OS’s other than Windows, so one has to specifically ask them to fix it.

Knoppix also throws in a load of software for personal computing, OpenOffice being my favorite. Nowadays I’m mostly booted in Knoppix because I’m pretty sure I can do most of the stuff I need to without having to boot back into something else.

Ubuntu is next on the list as a Linux Live CD must have. They can send you the CDs on registration from their Web site. It is completely free. So you don’t even have to burn the CD on your own. The latest release offers the installation CD and live CD on one media. Ubuntu as a distro has grown in popularity recently, and is the arguably the most user-friendly Linux available. It has the best combination of free software bundles, and is best optimized for speed, recommended for anyone who is starting out on Linux or Live CDs.

Fedora Live CD: Fedora is next in the evolution of “Red Hat” the most popular Linux distro of yesteryears. The latest version 8 (Werewolf) had a Live CD project for all platforms as of writing this article. I have always maintained Fedora is not a distro for the average user. The configurations and setups for various tasks are not very intuitive and it is not the fastest distro around. I use it rarely and only to try out something that might not be working for me in other distros.

This brings us to some very specific distros, which are created keeping some very specific features in mind. These are what make the Live CD concept very interesting:

MoviX: Is a light media distribution that supports streaming, TV cards, slideshows, and internet radio. So if you are just looking to watch TV, listen to internet radio or play DVDs, you can use this distro to boot your system and enjoy. It has a very interesting subdistro, eMoviX, which is just 8 Megs anbd when booted will automatically start playing all the video files stored in the root directory.

eLearnix: Formerly FreeLoader Linux, this has a host of Linux tutorials to get you started on the basics of Linux. It's about 320 megs, My favorite for learning Linux.

UBCD: (Ultimate Boot CD) Bundle software for repair and fix your system. I have used this many times to test and diagnose problems on my hard drive. It has an amazing combination of tools for repair and rescue.

Oralux: I haven’t tried this one but from their Web site: distribution for blind or visually impaired people. The CD includes Flite, a free Text-To-Speech software available in English and French.

FIRE: This is for forensic analysis, incident response, data recovery, virus scanning and vulnerability assessment.

There are numerous other Live CD projects in various stages of development for some very niche computing requirements. It’s interesting to note how an entire operating system is designed dedicated to a certain type of computing requirements. This results in very optimal usage of computing resources available to the user. Some examples of stable/under development distros:

For Bioinformatics sciences: bioknoppix, DNALinux, VigyaanCD
For Education purposes: eduKnoppix, Knoppix for kids, Linux-EduCD

For Gaming: AdvanceCD, GamesKnoppix, KnoppiXMAME, LinuxConsole

For Geogrphic Information Systems (GIS): GeoMorphix, GisMorphix, Quantian, StarCD

For Media: Caster, DeMuDi Live, Mediainlinux, Musix GNU+Linux

For Medical sciences: CDMEDICPACSWEB, LiveOIO, OpenVistA VivA

It is worth noting that specialization like this is not possible with proprietary operating system business models. Imagine a Microsoft Windows release just for clinical research!

Live CD based computing offers a paradigm shift from normal routine computing where you start your system and it boots up in the same OS for you. It expands the possibilities of computing for a user and enables him or her to test and examine options non-intrusively.

I have been using Live CDs for a year now, I rarely boot off my hard disk. My favorite advantage of a Linux Live CD is (apart from the fact that it is free), that I can switch off my machine without going through the long “it is now safe to turn off your machine” routine!