I love my live CD!

[Shannon]

If you're unfamiliar with the concept of a "live CD", it's basically an entire operating system that runs from the CD, instead of booting from the hard disk. There are live CDs for Windows, but they almost always are designed specifically to repair it.

Linux, though, not having to worry about being sued by Microsoft for circumventing their stranglehold on the customer, has embraced LiveCDs (and I think it was actually invented by Linux users), and now almost all flavors of Linux are made available as live CDs or live DVDs. They come to you as runnable fully configured operating systems with the whole set of software already installed.

PCLinuxOS is like that. You boot the live CD and then either use the system, or install it. You can also use it while it's installing.

Well, the other day, I did an update, and it broke my ability to import video clips into my video editor. That really surprised me, because it's the first time in five years that such a thing has happened using PCLinuxOS. But it's okay, because within a few minutes of experimenting, I determined that I could just boot the live CD, install the video editor, and start working again.

The amazing thing is, the Live CD renders 3 times faster than when I was booting from the disk! I don't now why, either, because running from a CD means your speed is usually limited to the CD reader... which is slow compared to hard disk access. Whatever the reason, I am now doing renders that would usually take 6-8-12 hours in 2-3!

I love my live CD.

(Oh, in case you're wondering, I was able to get the attention of the guy in charge of producing PCLinuxOS and show him what went wrong, and he's working to fix it. So in a day or so, there should be an update that fixes it. That's good customer service.

[Shannon]

How's that for attention? Day 1 I discover the problem. Day 2 I report the problem. Day 3, the problem is fixed.

[idle]

Live CDs are great.
It loads faster because it loads all the kernel stuff in the ram and from there the speeds are nothing compared to hdd or CD reads.

btw if you are interested you should try getting your live cd on a USB stick.
Its much better have your favorite OS in your pocket. (and with all your settings and preferences)
try it

[Shannon]

I wish I could find my damned USB key! But I spent this months mad money, so I'll have to wait a bit. USB drives have a strong tendency to be come corrupt in my experience - is that because I'm dealing with cheap drives or because somehow things aren't being dismounted properly?

[idle]

I wish I could find my damned USB key! But I spent this months mad money, so I'll have to wait a bit. USB drives have a strong tendency to be come corrupt in my experience - is that because I'm dealing with cheap drives or because somehow things aren't being dismounted properly?

the answer is both.
Cheap drives are not a good option for a live os. or for storing important stuff. I use the cheap drives to transfer large amount of data to PCs that are not connected to the internet and i got 2 good drives that i keep my stuff on them (encoded)

and if you dont dismount it proparly then you will get a corrupted drive for sure(sooner or later). if you are in a hurry atleast wait until any reading/writing to the partition is finalized.

[Shannon]

I have always tried to properly unmount the partitions, and I always have a corrupt partition within a few dismounts. It got so frustrating I just quit trying with USB.

I used to run a desktop system built from the ground up from FreeBSD on the CLI, so I'm familiar with how dismounting goes on Linux and BSD... I'm no newbie to that sort of stuff. I just could never figure out how no matter what filesystem I used, it always got corrupted within a few disconnects.