[svlug] Neato LiveCDs

[Heather Stern]

  I've been playing around some with a liveCD that *isn't* a bigname distro,
  this one's called NimbleX.   

  I kind of like it because it's sized for a mini-CD.  On the other hand,
  they make DVD material in mini-round size these days and maybe there is
  some nice live-disc at that size.  On the next tentacle, anyone in the
  universe can point at a URL list of live CDs - but only people can comment
  on how useful, or not, they've found these things and for what purposes.

  My goal is to pick something that would be the best rescue-disc to keep
  stashed in the colo next to whatever SVLUG's server du jour is.  As such
  the monitor in a crashcart might not be the most brilliant;  it has to be
  able to deal with hardware that isn't the bleeding edge, and it has to be
  able to properly deal with RAID devices.

  However, I also use liveCDs for netlounges, normal joe souls just hitting
  up their irc and webmails, so I'm sure there's a stack suited for that
  too.  Ubuntu live and Knoppix are both nice, but their newer cuts often
  fail - sometimes very poorly - on antique hardware such as the average
  convention beast.

So... what liveCDs have you played with, and what do you like best of 'em?

   NimbleX seems to offer on its menu very clean types of setup to pick.
   The advanced/see more has a Safe Mode, I'm glad they did such a thing,
   and trying that out actually mentions during boot things you can add to
   commandline in order to stop additional actions (like turning off hotplug
   if it hates you).  I think that kind of fine grained control without 
   reaching for a cheatcodes list is very nice.

  . | .    Heather Stern          |     (408) 374-7623 land
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