Hello,

Debian LIVE CD is no longer available as it was in the past.

One may find:
https://wiki.debian.org/LiveCD


What is today the best Debian based LIVE CD (with at least a 4.x kernel) for best hardware support (drivers,...)?

Thank you and Best regards
Pat

Not sure what you mean that Debian Live CD is not available... did you look here?

For other Debian based live disks, I tend to favor Knoppix which has Linux kernel 4.7.9 in the latest version.

Hi.

Try: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/u...ding-firmware/

hope it helps?

Last time I built a custom Debian testing Live, I went from store to store booting it up, running a script to get hardware information and what would need work to get support for items not working. Then go back home, do some homework, integrate support for items found unsupported after running it in around 40-50 units, go back to some other outlets and try it again till eventually I had full support for any needed or desired device in any PC that could be found on the market including proprietary graphics support for all device id's the Debian supplied drivers supported.

It took a few months of long days/nights to achieve that, as there is a lot of hardware out there on the shelves not natively supported by the Linux kernel. I had boot scripts scanning for hardware id's of hardware needing proprietary components or manipulating kernel modules for supported devices to work properly, building drivers on the fly, all implemented during the boot process so that when the desktop arrived, everything was ready to go.

If building a custom Debian live is anything like it was a few years ago, getting awesome hardware support can be achieved. But Debian is more all about free, so awesome hardware support has to be implemented. You can do this with any Live distro by running it persistent on a USB stick, possibly rebuild the iso to include proprietary support.

At least for Debian, you need to find the time to get good hardware support.

there is no "best", you need to specify your hardware and need to check if that was supported or not.

I have some live distros as well made on my custom built, such as :
- Debianix with 3.16, with live-boot based on syslinux
- DSD-Linux (damn lightweight) with 4.5.5, with live-boot, based on grub (less reliable)
- New one based on mostly testing and 4.9.1 kernel, with live-boot and on Grub again.

I must say that it takes so much time to make, especially to tweak, custom and make all of it working for notebooks.

Knoppix is not a today ideal solution since it is more a Knoppix scripts (Lua,...) rather than a only Debian based solution.


Debian should really remove Systemd. The LID on Systemd much be each time changed and it is so much to bring back.


Slackware has a cooooool live distros, and it has a great Intel, NV, support with amazing stability.

Slackware is however not always the distro of choice for beginners. Usually they like a Distro rather based on Ubuntu...

We can work on this together if your like...

Most Linuces can create a live run from an installed distro so you could use* that netinst* with the non-free firmware* to setup what you like* then run a spin of your own...

I don't want to do this. I can do so already. It takes time to build up all this,.

The point is that there must be already on internet a LiveCD Debian (not Ubuntu,...) with good hardware support - Simply Debian.

You're not going to find that. You're going to have to use Ubuntu or Mint. Debian Live used to provide images including non free firmware. Unfortunately when the Debian Live project ceased, so did those images.

To must use Ubuntu live distro is quite sad/pitty

After googling, I noticed that one cannot find easily the alternative or simply go for Archives of those live projects, however, even if there were, it is not viable for long time, since kernel will become simple too old for modern hardwares, videos cards,... and so on.

https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cd...86/iso-hybrid/
Here one can likely get old releases of live.

I am really curious what kind of hardware support, firmware, ... kernel,.. it has and if numerous graphic cards are supported of this one:
https://gemmei.acc.umu.se/mirror/cdi...de-desktop.iso

Post #3 doesn't work?

Not yet tried. That's the next!! This link is on the trying todo list ! Thank you Jam'
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/u...ding-firmware/

debian-live-8.5.0-i386-kde vmlinuz1 initrd1.img: I formatted to ext, installed grub, used vmlinuz1 and initr1.img, used toram on the kde live image, and let's test!!

Here are some new testing results:
The image of live debian from the above link has a classic hardware support of debian 8.x with a classic kernel 3.16. It boots but hangs like such a old hardware support wont work on most new PCs. This live debian based on 8.x and 3.x is much too old to support anything. /lib/firmware is not populated so you won't get wifi... It holds a Systemd The installation of the live distro is relatively "clean". There are maybe non necessary packages, but that's a good compromise for everyone and every use. However, pretty old for hardware and you won't even be capable to get your hardware fully working. KDE hangs and crashes here pretty well.
===> Possible solutions to improve it: Well, this live debian official (archive) must be tweaked, upgraded to newer kernel or needs some more module compiling,...
===> Conclusion: too much work on the live to make it work. I can take 1 or 2 days to bring this image to a good hardware support. Systemd needs to be removed and replaced by sysvinit with sinit. Firmware should be improved, several packages completely removed, KDE start issue should be checked, /etc/systemd needs definitely some work on it, Xorg/X11 needs to be changed, few boot scripts,... more hardware support, and of course, the the kernel/modules must be completely made new.

Hopefully this is better. Let's do some research...
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/u...ding-firmware/


edit for Jam':
After following the link, it looks to be a 8.6.x here. Likely one will end with old versions, quite similar to above, no??
A bit curious what's in it. So download in process...
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/u...86/iso-hybrid/

Don't be afraid of the weekly live builds... ...non-free/cd-including-firmware/weekly-live-builds

not sure what kernel the live ones uses but I'm running stretch/sid (installed) with Linux-4.8.0-2-amd64

Libreboot sells a C201 with Debian Stretch so software video rendering to get around using video acceleration binary blobs &c...

I only install Sid (when Debian) these days, it's much more muchness!

1 members found this post helpful.

I know it's getting a little off-topic but have to quote this as I agree completely.

In the meantime, I made my own custom kernel again. This time, I took the 4.9.2. and installed in onto a debootstrap on testing. To make it fast, I debootstraped with Systemd. I am not a fan of Systemd.

One hour ago, I just finished making the Live. I believe that's the only way to make Linux live fully working. However, I don't believe that most users can do such installation "sport", since it takes time to compile and to make the all thing.

I will try in the next days, when I get more more time.


what's the meaning?