This is the first part of the article, you might like to read Part 2

Live CDs are unique un-putdownables that have the ability to run a complete, modern operating system on a computer lacking mutable secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive. Using Live CDs you can get the envirenment of your ever-loved OS on any computer even without ainstalling or altering any settings in that computer. Today we review Ten (10) live cds which, we feel are very good in terms of the functionality they provide. We have mentioned the unique feature and funcationalty of every Live CD distro. Go ahead, and try one today!

Puppy Linux: Puppy really is small, the live-CD typically being 85MB, yet there really is a complete set of GUI applications. Being so small, Puppy usually loads completely into RAM, which accounts for it's incredible speed. Puppy Linux is extremely userfriendly and is highly recommended for Linux Newbies. It has all the applications required for daily use and can run multimedia out-of-the box (and they say playing videos on Linux is not easy). Puppy Linux is very low on system resources and will breathe new life into old PCs.

KNOPPIX is a bootable Live system on CD or DVD, consisting of a representative collection of Linux software. Knoppix boasts about automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals, the works. KNOPPIX can be used as a productive Linux system for the desktop, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to Knoppix's on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it. The DVD "Maxi" edition has over 8GB of software.

Slax is a portable, small and fast Linux operating system with a modular approach and outstanding design. Despite its small size, Slax provides a wide collection of pre-installed software for daily use, including a well organized graphical user interface and useful recovery tools for system administrators. The modular approach gives you the ability to include any other software in Slax easily. Say, if you're missing your favourite text editor, networking tool or game, simply download a module with the software and copy it to Slax. You don't even need to install or configure anything.

UBCD for Windows is a bootable recovery CD that contains software used for repairing, restoring, or diagnosing almost any computer problem which has Windows Operating System installed on it. Almost all software included in UBCD4Win are freeware utilities for Windows. UBCD4Win is based on Bart's PE. Bart's PE builds a Windows "pre-install" environment CD, basically a simple Windows® XP booted from CD. UBCD4Win includes network support and allows you the ability to modify NTFS volumes, recover deleted files, create new NTFS volumes, scan hard drives for viruses, etc.

GeexBox is a standalone LiveCD-based distribution which aims at turning your computer into a so called HTPC (Home Theater PC) or Media Center. It's a ready to boot operating system than works on any Pentium-class x86 computer or PowerPC Macintosh, implying no software requirement. You can even use it on a diskless computer, the whole system being loaded in RAM. Despite his tiny ISO image size (~20MB), the distribution comes with a complete and automatic hardware detection, not requiring any driver to be added. It supports playback of nearly any kind of audio/video and image files and all known codecs and containers are shipped in, allowing playing them through various physical supports, either being CD, DVD, HDD, LAN or Internet.

This article will be continued in it`s second part where we will tell you about five more awesome Live-CD based distributions. So keep watching till we author the Part 2. You can read our Linux related articles in the Linux Section.

This is the first part of the article, you might like to read Part 2

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