Live Distribution of the Year
 

The Distribution of the Year poll has been broken into three polls this year (Server, Desktop and Live).

--jeremy

What about Mandriva One? That is a Live CD.

missed: Frenzy/FreeSBIE/OliveBSD

What no Gentoo live cd? I treasure my Gentoo live!

no debian ???

No MEPIS????
How much ignorance is in the world that ignore the first created live distro!!!!!

Debian is a great idea!
 

Thanks!

http://live.debian.net/cdimage/etch-.../current/i386/

.img for USB drives and .iso for live CDs.

missing: grml

Hey, where's Debian?

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livecd
quoting Wikipedia:
KNOPPIX came out a few months before MEPIS according to DistroWatch.com

I would consider knoppix to be the first liveCD distro.

Hi Jeremy,


Aren't you going to include NimbleX? It's got a nice customizable way of creating you own live distro online. :)

My favourite is Mandriva. It detects hardware the best of all I tried and has Compiz Fusion enabled by default. I have to try PCLinuxOS one day.

If you want speed, utility, and a small footprint, DSL is very hard to beat.

Jeff

antiX, though better installed.

Back Track should be on here...

antiX
 

i've tried antix. i thought it had some fun-looking defualts, like the fluxbox WM, and really easy to use GUI. It was light-weight on my beat up old machine too.

Here, I miss the brilliant Wolvix, a small lightweight but very powerful Slackware-based live CD with excellent hardware support.

No Sidux? Its already at slot 21 on Distrowatch while only existing just over one year...

I would also agree with several other posters here. This list is nowhere near comprehensive.

--bob

ok, i vote for fedora 7 live

I find Knoppix to be a no brainer here. :p

There is no Wolvix here, boo!
 

Wolvix, Wolvix, Wolvix!!!

I carry around a dyne:bolic disk.

I also wonder why sidux is not on the list... not mentioning Wolwix or splendid FaunOS based on Arch...
Best,
tami

Kanotix maybe? It is still alive and still one of the best, IMO.

I prefer the minimal SystemRescueCD. It is based on gentoo, but I feel it's different enough to warrant its own poll option.

C'mon, add antiX to the list and make my day.
An up-to-date livecd that boots in 90 secs with only 128MB RAM can't be bad.

Zenwalk Live is the best live cd, bar none. Please add it.

Nevermind.

Live distro of the year.....
 

I would interpret your title to mean the choice of the Live distro introduced in the year 2007, not any that are already extant.

I do not see the newest one ( and the very best) on the list to be voted for.

My vote stays here in this post for FaunOS based on archlinux kernel-2.6.21 which boots from flash drive, or dvd, and has a cd boot disc for systems not having usb boot. The system has 500 program packages on a 993MB flash drive. It uses aufs and can save session.

It is fabulous!!

where is kanotix
 

i am missing Kanotix?!

or do only stable releases count???

If there where Zenwalk i would voted to it, since it's based on Slax i voted for Tomas M.'s distro instead - that's power!
All try http://www.slax.org
:D
It can now both use live modules and blend them in (if on rw media) for consecutive boots...
I'm all pro-SLAX now!

I second to that :D

... i wish i could vote for GoboLinux

Can't vote. My choice - Parsix - isn't there. You need an 'Other' category.

I am a Debian user, but for Live CD's, it's strictly BackTrack.

ubuntu or Helix
 

For desktop & live, the best experience I have ever had has been with unbuntu. Open Suse 10 worked fine on an old Gateway laptop, but it never seemed to be able to handle wireless devices. Ubuntu works flawlessly, provided you have Fawn.

My company uses the Helix/Knoppix distro for work purposes. It has lots of excellent security apps which makes network and desktop analysis easy.

For personal usage, I'd have to recommend ubuntu, though. It is the most flawless I have used to date.

Zenwalk is Slackware too
 

Backtrack is based on slax.
slax is based on linux-live scripts and Slackware
both of them the work of the excellent Thomas Matjicek.
Thomas made Slackware live :D

So I would recommend SLAX, but...

Zenwalk, despite being also based on SLAX and Slackware has a far better and better finished Howto for Live-linux expansion and customisation.

So, since Linux is for freedom and customisation IMHO, i woted for Zenwalk so this excellent distro could get the exposure it deserves.

Slax - live --> 250MB
Zenwalk - live --> 450MB
BackTrack2 - live --> 700MB

I voted Ubuntu live, but I really would have prefered Linux Mint. Mepis Anti X is also a very good one as is Wolvix.

Well, I voted fedora because I can make my own live CD's
without any giant pain, but I like Knoppix, DSL, Puppy, and since I run Solaris too, Belenix as well :)

First Live CD's
 

And didn't Morphix come out shortly before Knoppix? I suppose I could be wrong, though.

Best LiveCD(s)
 

This is kind of a broad category. It really depends on what you, personally, use live cd's for. Some use them as a temporary desktop. Some use them for hardware/alternate OS analysis. Some use them for security auditing, or even as a temporary multimedia suite.
This makes it kind of tough to say which distro is simply the best, when they may not even be aiming to do the same thing.

That said, the 2 main reasons I would use a live cd is for exposure to a certain distro (or just linux in general), usually for others; or as a security auditing/computer diagnostic tool.
My choice for the first, would have to be Ubuntu. While I've been a long-time fan of Knoppix, and was skeptical of Ubuntu at first, Ubuntu has proven to be just as useful. Although I was afraid Ubuntu (live cd) would be too "noob" friendly, and restrict what I wanted to do as a power user, I've found that I can still access everything I want with ease. The primary reason I choose it over others, like Knoppix, is it's rapid adoption and support of hardware. Of all the live cd's I've used, Ubuntu (largely because of it's active development team) recognizes and runs on the widest and most inclusive array of hardware. (openSUSE 10 Live, is one of the closest recent alternatives to Ubuntu, but is still lacking in a few minor areas.)
My choice for a security/recovery distro is BackTrack. I used to use Knoppix STD, and PHLAK. The reason I used both, was that each had some tools that the other did not have. The (at least recent) BackTrack distro, I have everything I could want, right at my fingertips, in very well-organized menu. BackTrack also seems to have better hardware support than a lot of the other security distros I've used.

In the end, I voted for Ubuntu, because it does what I think live cd's are most used for. And because of it's ease-of-use and great stability and hardware support, Ubuntu has made one of the largest impacts of exposing users of other operating systems to the wonderful world of Linux. I think Ubuntu has come the closest to being able to replace the average Windows or Mac OS user's operating system.

Thanks, Linus, for making all of this possible. :)

+1 for HELIX. I've found out the hard way certain commercial forensic boot CD's and floppies suck major, and that is an understatement. In a lot of cases forensic data acquisition would have been near impossible for me without this Live CD in my toolkit.

As an ancient newbie, I tried a few versions of linux and of those I tried I favour 'puppy' for its simplicity, 'susie' for its presentation and add ons, however I still cannot get my new 'samsung' laser to work with any distro I have tried. The manufacture states and supplies a linux driver for it on the install c.d., but what version of linux? they do not state, could it be 'ninja' linux? lol. I will not give up trying linux, its very quick, precise, with no memory/system slowing parasites of the type you get with windows, my ancient dx4/100 runs faster in 'puppy' than my 2.4 gig runs in xp. I do find it rather strange that m.s. are delving into linux, will they do another apple/Jobes and steal it then apply their barbed wire ring fence around it with another million patents? then challenge the man who originaly wrote the code to get a billion dollar lawyer to sue them, if he could ever afford it. Anyway a happy new year and many happy hours proving linux does work to you all, kind regards, Bob (delta bravo).

Sidux here. They did a very good job with customizing the Debian Sid.

I agree, plus in my experience is does better on hardware detection than Knoppix. Also installs a full functioning and upgradeable(unlike Knoppix) Debian system much faster than the Debian install disks.

CentOS Live
 

It wouldn't have changed my vote for KNOPPIX, but CentOS does have a Live-CD available and would seem to deserve a spot on this list.

Sabayon.. feature rich.. has everything one may ever need!

except KDE which I can't do without :D