LiveCD News

Tectonic takes a look at the new release of Puppy Linux.

Its been been six months since Puppy Linux 3.01 was released and today Barry Kauler announced Puppy 4.00, aka Dingo. Clocking in at a minimal 87MB download, Puppy 4.00 is a lightweight desktop Linux alternative ideal for low-end machines, or for users who want a little less clutter and more speed from their desktop.

Linux.com has a quick review of Puppeee.

Puppy Linux (and, by extension, Puppeee) was written from scratch with two goals in mind: speed and ease of use. Puppy Linux is, indeed, lightning fast — even when running on low-end machines like the Eee PC.

Phoronix has a review and pics of the first development release of OpenSolaris Project Indiana.

After downloading this ISO (the Developer Preview is only 629MB), the image can be burned to a disc and immediately booted. Project Indiana incorporates a “Slim Install” LiveCD for x86 systems. Just like Ubuntu, Fedora Live, and a number of other Linux distributions, you can boot to this CD and start using it without ever touching the contents of your hard drive.

Lifehacker reviews the latest release of the lightweight Puppy Linux.

Booting Linux from an external drive with the applications and settings of your choice has never been easier after this weeks release of Puppy Linux 3.0. Like Damn Small Linux, Puppy is small enough to fit on a USB thumb drive, and like Knoppix , you can boot it from CD.

LinuxPlanet has a review of Damn Small Linux.

At a mere 50MB, Damn Small Linux DSL seems like it would be more at home in the realm of rescue disks instead of Desktop OSs. After booting up into full graphical mode, you may be hooked on this tiny distribution forever. I am impressed with the number of applications and the fact that DSL has two choices for graphical interfaces Window Managers: Fluxbox and jwm see Figures 1 and 2. DSL is based on the Debian Linux distribution.

This week’s DistroWatch Weekly compares two popular, lightweight LiveCDs aimed at partition management.

DistroWatch Weekly has a review of the recently released Elive 1.0.

Elive has reach its first major milestone with its release of version 1.0. I’ve tested several versions of Elive over the last two years (or so), publishing my findings a few times. I haven’t published a report on Elive since 0.5 and things have continued to improve. I’ve been testing Elive 1.0 for several days and certainly agree that this release is worthy of the full first release status.

The InformationWeek Blog has a review of Hikarunix.

You want proof theres a Linux distribution for absolutely every possible application? Heres one for you: Hikarunix, a distro dedicated to Go players and based on the ever-versatile Damn Small Linux DSL.

DistroWatch weekely has an incredibly long review of one person’s experiences using Puppy Linux.

Most distro reviews focus on installing and using one release of a recent distro. But when people decide to stick with a distro, or abandon it after a longer period of use, the reasons are more to do with the entire distro experience, which includes the distro technology, its package management, the size and reliability of its package repositories, the ease and speed with which bugs are reported and fixed, the quality of the documentation, and the social experience of being part of the distro’s community, as exemplified by its forum and IRC channels. Here I relate my personal experiences with Puppy Linux over the course of approximately one year.

Linux.com has a review of Gentoo 2007.0. Looks like there are some significant issues with the live discs, especially if you have an ATI video card.

Gentoo 2007.0 is available in several formats for various platforms. As per its torrent download statistics, most popular are the live DVD, the live CD, and the minimal CD for x86 and AMD64 platforms. The live CD contains Linux kernel 2.6.19, Xorg 7.2, GNOME 2.16.0, OpenOffice.org 2.1.0, Firefox 2.0.0.3, Thunderbird 1.5.0.10, Evolution 2.8.2.1, and X-Chat and Gaim (now Pidgin) for IRC and instant messaging. The DVD version has everything the CD has, along with KDE 3.5.5, XFCE 4.4.0, GIMP 2.2.14, Abiword 2.4.6, KOffice 1.6.1, and several other applications, tools, and libraries.

Journal Of An Open Sourcee reviews the GCompris Live CD.

Shortly after receiving a comment on my other blog (Brazilian Portuguese only) from Armando Silva about an educational Live CD, my curiosity got the best of me and I just had to check it out.

Techgage reviews the new 2007.0 release of Gentoo, and compares it and the new installer to the previous 2006.1 release.

If you are familiar with the installers from either 2006.x version, you cannot consider yourself an expert with the installer from 2007.0, as many things have been changed around and it functions differently overall. I will get into these changes are we go along.

Linux.com reviews Digipup.

Puppy Linux is a lightweight live Linux distribution that you can boot and run from a CD, USB stick, or DVD. One of its features is the ability to create specialized “pups” — new versions of Puppy Linux geared toward a specific purpose. Digipup is one such example, with a focus on amateur radio. I spun it up, and found Digipup to be a great way to check out amateur radio utilities for Linux.

Linux.com reviews BackTrack 2.

BackTrack is a live CD Linux distribution that focuses on penetration testing. A merger of two older security-related distros — Whax and Auditor Security Collection — BackTrack bundles more than 300 security tools.

CLICK reviews Puppy Linux 2.15CE.

DistroWatch Weekly has an overview of Knoppix as part of their “Top 10″ Linux distros feature.

Linux.com reviews the multimedia monster LiveCD named Dyne:Bolic.

The Dyne:Bolic distribution is a live CD designed for creating, broadcasting, and publishing all kinds of audio, video, and graphic content. It includes some of the best free and open source tools with which you can compose music, mix video streams, and create 3-D animations.

Wired’s Compiler blog has a brief overview of Damn Small Linux.

We’ve written about portable apps quite a number of times in the past, but why bother with just apps when there’s a whole OS that’ll fit on a 50MB USB stick? Damn Small Linux, sometimes abbreviated DSL, is a 50MB mini desktop Linux distribution.

tuxmachines.org reviews the new GoblinX release.

GoblinX developers released their 2007.1 Premium version of GoblinX Linux recently and I was able to obtain the 1-cd version for testing. GoblinX has always been a very interesting project to watch with their odd-looking almost macabre-themed XFCE distro. It’s based on Slackware, so you know they have a good foundation and XFCE is coming into its own. With new versions of GoblinX being released about once per year, it’s hard to pass up the chance to test it when a new one arrives on the scene.

LINUX ON DESKTOP reviews Puppy Linux.