computer: linux live?

[amezri]

So to see whether or not Windows is being the problem, I'm thinking of running Linux of a bootable CD.

Who here has experience with that? I'm pretty sure I'll just go with Slax? But anyone with more Linux experience, please give me some input. I just want to be able to run the OS off a CD without formatting/installing it onto my primary drive right now.

Comments

[moirarogers.livejournal.com]

Ubuntu Live is super user friendly.

-Bree

[amezri.livejournal.com]

On first glance at making an Ubuntu Live CD, I was a little confused, but I will look into that more.

knoppix and kubuntu

[goddessoftea.livejournal.com]

I have to say that I am a big fan of Knoppix when it comes to running an OS off of a CD, but i might be behind the times as i have never heard of slax . . .

Re: knoppix and kubuntu

[amezri.livejournal.com]

I can't find any real info on Slax -- like what build it's based off of or if it's own. So I'm going to look into Ubuntu and also Knoppix, thanks for the rec!

[tirgaya.livejournal.com]

I am just glad you are finally doing this.

Pick something based on a popular distro and that includes as many of the tools you need as practical.

Why popular? Because then you can help doing stuff if you need it.

I've used Knoppix for a long time as my Live OS of choice when I did tech work for a living.

[amezri.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well... it's partially frustration with Windows and partially frustration with this machine. I'll probably be giving up Windows totally if I can find a proper Photoshop substitute.

Knoppix was also recommended above. Will look into that and Ubuntu.

[ozw.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, there is no decent alternative to Photoshop for Linux...GIMP has most of the same functionality, but if you thought PS was hard to learn, GIMP is impossible.

[amezri.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much what I figured. How annoying. PS was easy to learn, but yeah, I hear the learning curve for GIMP is pretty harsh.

[ozw.livejournal.com]

Knoppix is a lifesaver for data recovery when Windows breaks (the Windows Rescue CD never seems to work when you need it most) so it's a good thing to have burned in case of emergency.

But Knoppix is really stripped down so in this case I'd say go with Ubuntu. As for actual usage, especially if you're new to linux, Ubuntu is the best Live CD...most things are pretty intuitive for Windows users and again, the community is awesome and won't tell you to "RTFM n00b!" if you need help. And it should detect almost all your hardware and whatnot automatically so you hopefully won't have to worry about drivers.

[amezri.livejournal.com]

Ubuntu Live CD acquired. But... see below comment about Linux issues writing to NTFS drive? As in, they can't really. :\

[xpashax.livejournal.com]

Knoppix used to be the live CD distro of choice, (in fact, for awhile I believe it was the ONLY choice) so people are generally inclined to go with that. Personally, I use an Ubuntu CD. Their normal install CD's also function as Live CD's. So just download the .iso and burn a disk with it and then boot off that CD and one menu selection later you'll be running Ubuntu in your RAM.

Once in Ubuntu, there will be an icon on the desktop that will initiate installing it to your hard drive. So as long as you avoid running that, it'll stay off your system. Just expect it to run a bit slower than usual since anytime you start a program it has to read it off the CD and uncompress it first. You will probably have access to your hard drives also, but (assuming they're NTFS) I wouldn't write anything to the hard drives. Reading from them is fine, but by my understanding, the linux community hasn't reliably figured out how to safely write to NTFS drives yet.

[amezri.livejournal.com]

Cool. I just downloaded a Ubuntu Live CD and will give that a try.

Hrm. I quick google search shows that Ubuntu can handle NTFS but not without some fiddling. So, that's kind of worrying since my storage drive is NTFS and if I switch over to Ubuntu I will need to do what, exactly with that data? :\

[ozw.livejournal.com]

It should read NTFS fine, the problem is writing to NTFS. You can download something that will allow you to write to NTFS, but it's a bit slower and not very "safe" as it won't support journaling. I'd suggest creating an ext3 partition on one of your drives for use with linux...you can download something on Windows to support ext2/3 partitions.

Probably should have asked this before, but which version of Ubuntu did you download? Cuz it's usually not a good idea to go with the latest version as the kinks haven't been worked out yet.

[amezri.livejournal.com]

hrm. Okay... that's kind of really annoying since I have 100+GB of data on an NTFS drive and would like to store it all there.

I got the 8.10 live CD from here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD - should I go with another?

[amezri.livejournal.com]

Apparently http://www.ntfs-3g.org/ works? It's claimed here that it's stable for use: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MainInclusionReportNtfs-3g

[ozw.livejournal.com]

Yea, that works, but still no journaling. I'd still suggest an ext3 partition for writing to and just use the NTFS for reading from. I'm not sure what would happen if your computer froze while writing to NTFS, and you probably wouldn't want to find out.

And yea, 8.10 is great, just wanted to make sure you didn't get 9.04 or 9.10.

[amezri.livejournal.com]

I don't even know what journaling does... like... can I download/save stuff to the ext3 and then transfer to the NTFS? *confused* And if it doesn't crash while writing to NTFS, file should be fine?

[ozw.livejournal.com]

Journaling is a sort of error correction that fixes corrupted data (like during a crash). As long as it doesn't crash while writing to NTFS you'll be fine, but I would be safe and download to ext3 and then transfer it to NTFS in Windows. You can get Windows to recognize ext2/3 partitions with http://www.fs-driver.org/

ext3 just works better with linux, kinda like how NTFS works way better in XP than FAT32.

[amezri.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Which means I still need to keep a Windows partition? Defeats the purpose of ditching Windows. Can't win.

[ozw.livejournal.com]

Haha well you're gonna wanna keep a Windows partition for Photoshop. Even hardcore linux nerds have programs need Windows sometimes (though they'll never admit it lol)

[amezri.livejournal.com]

Which pretty much means we will never break our dependency on Windows?

What if I bought another hard drive just for the Ubuntu install? And kept Windows as is on this drive and then shift secondary to tertiary for storage. I could use the linux one regularly, and the windows one to transfer files from ext3 to NTFS.

Or does that sound way too complicated?

[ozw.livejournal.com]

That works. Dual-booting is easy.

[amezri.livejournal.com]

Well, first I'm going to have to run the Live CD for a few days and see if it freezes. If it does, then I have some bizarre hardware problems.