Make Live Security Distros Permanent?
 

Any advice on taking something like BackTrack, Helix or the SUSE Security distro and installing it as a permanent OS?

Thanks in advance,
ddonzal

I believe that most (if not all of those) can be permanently installed. However, the question of whether it's a good idea or not really depends on what you are planning to use it for. The concept of a Live CD is perfect for a Forensic distro due to the fact that most users will be performing forensic analysis on *other* systems and do not want to make any alterations on the harddisk. By installing anything, let alone a new distro, you are potentially modifying the disk which is a major no-no when doing a forensic analysis. Plus doing an install for each analysis is tedious.

But there are some situations where it would be usefull, like as a permanent console for doing intrusion testing/auding of a LAN or just using it because you find installing all those tools on a standard distro to be annoying. One very important thing to consider is that like many Live distros, most do not release updates for security vulnerabilities. So you'll need to manually track vulns and update the system otherwise you'll find yourself doing a forensic analysis on your own system.