The Blog of Harald

“Extreme Tech”:http://www.extremetech.com/ recently published “a review of four Linux LiveCDs”:http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3998,a=117223,00.asp, which was linked to by “slashdot”:http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/25/0340221.

The distributions were:

* “Knoppix”:http://www.knoppix.com/ – daddy of ’em all
* “Feather Linux”:http://featherlinux.berlios.de/ – very small, light, and minimalist.
* “Gnoppix”:http://www.gnoppix.org/ Gnome-only version of Knoppix (which is KDE-based).
* “Mepis”:http://www.mepis.org/

The reviewers liked Knoppix best, with Mepis a close second. They had trouble with Gnoppix (and I have to agree; I did too when I tried it), and Feather is too minimalist for casual users (but might be great for power users).

I cary a Knoppix live-CD around with me, and I’ve used it for a couple of emergency rescues already, as well as for repartitioning an evil Win2K box a while back.

The slashdot comments add pointers to others:

* “Damn Small Linux”:http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ it’s specialty is to fit on a 50mb business card CD.
* “MandrakeMove”:http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/mandrakemove/ implements USB keys for storing configuration and profiles, so that you can quickly turn any bootable PC into your personal desktop.
* And of course: “Linux Live”:http://www.linux-live.org/ allows you to create a LiveCD from any linux distribution…

I might make a DSL business card CD, just for the fun of it…