Thanx for all the info.

Ok, guess I shall start with the Live CD first. I have heard of Knoppix live CD. But people say slax is faster. Can someone tell me why?

One more thing. What are the most used and supported Linux distros out there? I mean, which distros does the manufacturers test their drivers/software on? Please post any problems that you encounter with your distros. Hehe... don't wanna encounter those problems myself..

Knoppix Homepage

Knoppix will give you all the whistles and bells that come with a full Linux install-the cd seems to use up all 700MB and the DVD is pretty packed up too the DVD edition gives you a lot more software of course than the CD version.

There are soo many packages installed for you and it sets up a nice working environment with KDE-KNoppix detects every bit of hardware on my pc..Wireless mouse-wireless internet-bluetooth-USB external HD-19way Card reader-a really old PCi-2X IDE card and it seems to love my Nvidia Graphics card giving me a wider range of desktop resolutions that winblows.

Slax HomePage

Slax also boots up into a KDE desktop but has less programs installed in it ./.but if you goto the homepage and look for downloads..you can add hundreds of packages to the ISO before you burn it giving you more options.


If I were to recommend one for you to use I would recommend Knoppix for a first time user of Linux..its just easier to burn the cd or dvd with tons of packages already there.

If you use them and like them as others have pointed out both will ask you at boot time each time if you want to boot from the cd or install Linux..you will gain some much more performance out of Linux when its installed properly onto the Hardrive.

Good Luck and happy Linuxing...

yeh, if you are interested in finding out about distro's for possible installation later, I'd suggest checking around in the linux forums here. There are nuermous topics already hitting on which are best for people new to linux, which have the best support, which are the easiest, which are the most configurable, etc. Basically when picking a distro their are a plethora of options to consider so it's good to take some time and read up so that your first experience is as best as it can be

in liveCD i don't get to choose a kernel image.
this is a con because i cannot get them to work in my laptop as it needs scsi.s or sata.s images. But if you install linux you have full control over your settings.
The installation comes with the standard kernel but upon installing the kernel source you can personalize your kernel and make it as light as possible as you know which drivers and options you need.
But if you know the liveCD is running well on your computer, it will quite suit your needs. You can mount your devices so you have all your hard drives as a free space (But if your hard drive is NTFS you need a newer kernel to support experimental writing)
as a conclusion if you want to just try it out use a liveCD but if you really mean it then install.

if you decide going on with a LiveCD use Knoppix.
Slax (200MB) may be faster but Knoppix (~600MB) has more tools then slax (for example slax doesnot have LaTeX but knoppix does)

This post has been edited by bombshop: Dec 21 2006, 09:35 PM

As many said the main difference lies in the speed and responsiveness of the Opersting System.CD-R drive is slow in data transfer capabilities so if you have a good CD drive the better.

If you are using an installed distribution it will be responsive.Another thing is that Live Linux Disc(k)s are small in most cases.Ubuntu is 698 MB consdering Fedora Core 6 which spans different CDs.I reccomend you to try a Live CD for evaluationg its interface only, you can change this later.

Live CDs run around 1/5th the speed of the Hard disk installed version of linux because of the rive's speed. They're used for testing purposes, and too much use can sometimes spoil your CDROM drive (at least old ones do). I'd recommend using a USB version, or installing on your hard disk.

Live disks are great for testing your hardware compatablity or if you need to run Linux on a machine you don't own. I would run it from a seperate HDD in dual boot if you plan to stick with it for the long haul.

@ unimatrix: It's recommended but not required. I ran Linux on a 2nd partition for years without problems.

xboxrulz

This is quite interesting, by windows is always crashing and it seems I have to install it once a week... Now I've been trying Linux images that run on windows, they come handy when setting up servers, testing everything on your own machine and then upload the image to the main server.
Now I'm thinking of changing to Linux completely and run a Windows image on it - it's just there are some windows apps that can't run on linux, no matter how hard wine tries ... A liveCD will really make things easier for the change and testing new distros... Thanks for the info!

You can always try having VMWare installed on your Linux so that you can run Windows on it.

xboxrulz