LiveCD Destribution
There are many different types of LiveCD�s ont the internet.As LiveCDs is increasing in popularity, so are the various types of distributions. According to DistroWatch the top 5 LiveCD�s are:
1)Knoppix
2)MEPIS Linux
3)PCLinuxOS
4)SLAX
5)Damn Small Linux
It is up to the user to choose which LiveCD he/she likes the best.
The primary focus is not the same for all Live CD�s. Each LiveCD has at least one of the following primary functions:
Desktops: provides a working GUI desktop environment
with a collection of desktop programs, such as browsers and text editors. Many
also include utilities for other purposes, such as home entertainment, but are
only listed here because the additional functions are not their primary focus.
OS Replacement: provides an option to transfer the cd to the hard drive,
or to install an OS in a different form
Education: provides a collection of educational programs, or was created
to be used in the educational field
Rescue: provides tools needed for data recovery
Clustering: provides tools for making clusters
Security: contains network security tools
Home Entertainment: geared towards playing video and audio
Gaming: video games!
Medical: contains medical programs
Diagnostics: contains utilities for testing hardware
Firewalls: distributions created to be used as firewalls
Forensics: distributions containing forensic tools
Servers: distributions used for various server functions
DSL (Damn Small Linux) is a very small 50MB desktop Linux oriented LiveCD. DSL gives us theminimum but we can customize our tools. It has many GUI Administrative tools which are fast and simple to use and it and also a lot of the controls have the ability to recover files. It is very simple to use and it gets updated frequently.
SystemRescueCd primary function is rescue. The primary focus is to make tools for system repair after a crash. Admin tasks are easily carried out on the computer, for example creating and editing the partitions of the hard disk. It is also very easy to use. Here are the main system tools:
- GNU Parted - is the best tool for editing your disk partitions under linux
- QtParted - is a Partition Magic clone for Linux.
- Partimage - is a Ghost/Drive-image clone for Linux
- File systems tools - (e2fsprogs, reiserfsprogs, reiser4progs, xfsprogs, jfsutils, ntfsprogs, dosfstools): they allow you to format, resize, debug an existing partition of your hard disk
- Sfdisk - allows you to backup and restore your partition table