Posted on 07/20/2010 8:24:33 AM PDT by Willie Green
Live CDs, DVDs or USB drives let you run Linux without actually installing it. Here are five reasons why you should.
Computerworld - In the almost 20 years since Linux was first released into the world, free for anyone to use and modify however they like, the operating system has been put to a lot of uses. Today, a vast number of servers run Linux to serve up Web pages and applications, while user-friendly versions of Linux run PCs, netbooks, and even Android and WebOS phones.
One incredibly useful way that Linux has been adapted to the needs of modern computer users is as a "live CD," a version of the operating system that can be booted from a CD (or a DVD or, in some cases, a USB drive) without actually being installed on the computer's hard drive. Given the massive RAM and fast CPUs available on even the lowest-end computers today, along with Linux's generally lower system requirements compared to Windows and Mac OS X, you can run Linux quite comfortably from a CD drive.
Live discs allow you to radically transform the nature of the machine you're working on -- without modifying the installed operating system and software at all. There are a number of reasons you might want to do this. The most obvious is to test a new version or different distribution of Linux before deploying it, saving yourself the surprise of incompatible software or nonfunctional hardware after installation. But even if your business does not plan to deploy Linux as a desktop or server operating system, there are still good reasons to have a live Linux CD or two on hand.
~~~SNIP~~~
Here are five ways to use live Linux in your business, as well as pointers to distributions best suited to each particular task.
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com ...
You’d have to be insane to run Windows as a standalone router. The neat thing about Devil Linux is that it doesn’t do anything else, and boots from a CD. You don’t have a bunch of daemons (services) running on a router that doesn’t need them. I have no desire to play games on my router.
By no means are you limited to 2 NICs; you could add more and have 4 interfaces. As far as the “2 NIC configuration,” a network card is like $10-20. You just pick up an extra or two and put them in.
I’ve used Linux pretty much exclusively since 1997, and my laptop runs Debian with VMware for when I need to run Windows or Solaris for testing something, every once in a while. Otherwise, I just have no need to run Windows.
So when one finally finds hardware compatible with Linux, they really stick with it.
LOL!
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I think I got my first exposure to linux with Mandrake 7 something. I went to Libranet for a while...I even paid for it. Used Mepis for quite a while as well. I resisted the newcomer Ubuntu for a long time, but now it's all I use.
Ubuntu 10.4’s pretty nice, what with the cloud feature and all.
Linux Mint (Ubuntu derivative) has the closest “look and feel” to Windoze that I’ve come across so far.
while user-friendly versions of Linux run PCs...
Let’s be honest here. There is nothing “user friendly” about Linux.
So I was testing a version of Knoppix and figure out the problem that I have to edit FSTAB. I figure I’ll just create a new file, make the changes, then rename the files.
Who’d a thunk that there doesn’t appear to be a simple rename command? To do what I needed, I had to use the Move command! Silly me!
And God forbid I should try to “man” something to see what a command does. It dumps 12 pages of info at me and I still haven’t figured out how to get back to where I was! ESC doesn’t work. None of the Fx keys work. Reboot works...
And the applications? About as consistent as McCain on the immigration issue...
That’s what you get when you have armies of 14 year olds who never went on a date writing code.
Linux is an interesting curiosity. The platypus of operating systems. Possibly perfect for servers you run out of you closet or basement.
But calling it user friendly is a statement of fantasy and wishful thinking.
Whod a thunk that there doesnt appear to be a simple rename command? To do what I needed, I had to use the Move command! Silly me!
Well yes, the bash prompt is best suited for geeks, just like the DOS prompt is for Windows users.
It's good stuff to know "just in case", but the average user really doesn't need to.
Linux has GUI text editors and file managers to easily do the tasks that you mention without having to epen up a terminal prompt command line.
bflr
Really? PCLOS is user friendly and in the rare event of trouble, I run fsck in safe mode to fix errors and I’m back in business. Try doing that with Windows.
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