Web design portfolio - Using LiveCDsAs I mention throughout this chapter (and
Using LiveCDsAs I mention throughout this chapter (and book), LiveCDs(or bootable distri- butions) are versions of Linux that you can launch directly by rebooting a com- puter using a Live CD-ROM (or DVD-ROM). The beauty of these versions, from aLinux newbie s point of view, is that you can try something out without havingto actually install anything on your system. Old-timers love LiveCDs, too. If asystem is broken into, rebooting it with a LiveCD is a way of giving yourself a known good (undamaged) system to work from while repairing the damageon the computer itself. Also, many bootable distributions offer highly special- ized environments for particular tasks . . . but I m getting ahead of myself. You also need to keep in mind that LiveCDs tend to be slower than a tradi- tionally installed system. Everything has to run directly from the CD or DVD- ROM, after all. Make sure, too, that you re able save things if you need to. Doing so canrequire some planning, or at least a bit of thought see Chapter 21 for how toaccomplish this. When all else fails, I quickly configure the mail client and juste-mail attachments to myself. That s how I got those NTFS resizing images (seeChapter 2) from Knoppix over to my Fedora machine while writing this book! You also can usually access your real hard drive space from a bootable distri- bution, though whether it supports NTFS or not depends on the version. Knoppix does support NTFS, though it s best to use it as read-only. Another popular option with LiveCDs is to use portable storage like USB key- chains. That way, you can carry around your keychain and your bootable dis- tribution and have access to your preferred environment andyour data at thesame time. The important thing to know about USB storage is that Linux seesthese items as SCSI drives, so if you have to access them manually (seeChapter 11) you ll access them as SCSI partitions. For example, if you ve gotyour USB keychain plugged into the first SCSI slot, it would probably be/dev/sda1. Finally, not all LiveCDs work with all PCs. The cool thing is that if one doesn twork with yours, you just shrug and download another! Finding Even More LinuxMore than 200 different Linux distributions are available today, with newones being created every year while others fade from existence as the initialenthusiasm or funding behind them dwindles away. Many of these distribu- tions are general purpose, or at least similar purpose (full desktop, fullserver, and so on), and so provide similar base software and surrounding92Part I:Getting Your Feet Wet