Hey guys.

im reading up on DamnSmallLinux.

and there is a download link for a Live CD image (iso)

but what is a live CD ???

an install disk ?

or a boot disk or what ???

thanX

It's a system that runs entirely off the CD - basically, the CD becomes an extra hard drive. They aren't meant to be installed, but some can be. It's kind of like bootdisk-as-complete-OS.

Since they run straight off a CD, they are a bit slower than a hard-drive installed distro. Especially when loading programs. They are still fully functional, though.

A good example is Knoppix - Live cd's in general are a good way of trying Linux without having to install a distribution on your hard drive if you do not wish to - Damm Small and Knoppix are good options.

I guess that a 'Live CD' then is really only good as a demo of linux and isn't really usable as your linux system, unless of course, it has some facility to write your configuration data, etc., to the existing hard drive, whether it's a windows drive or a linux drive or maybe a mac drive.

Is that right?

Well, Knoppix and others have a way to save config files in a compressed file on your hard drive if you wish and they can either write to floppy or cd-rw or hard drive if configured that way, I believe. But, yeah, mainly for demos, recovery disks, and cheating on installing. Also, incidentally, as a kind of cross between recovery and cheating and something else, if you have a hard time, say, getting X configured, you can have Knoppix try to auto-detect it and copy the XF86Config to a floppy and then copy it back in to the system you're trying to install and see if that doesn't work around some problems.

I just like it because I know that, as long as I've got hardware, I've got a working system at the flick of a drive, so to speak, no matter how I may hose the writable systems on my hard drive.