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

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

... 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.

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.

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

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

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

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).