About
This site was created to help sort through the many LiveCDs available to find the right one. It currently tracks LiveCDs, LiveDVDs, and LiveUSB operating systems.
If you see anything that needs to be updated or changed, please leave a comment on that project's page. Other comments can be left here, or you can email me at nick@frozentech.com.
-Nick
Rules
Each entry must have a web presence (website, web page, etc) and an available download (free or paid) for a CD, DVD, or USB Flash Drive image.
Key
Primary Functions
Desktops: provides a working GUI desktop environment with a collection of desktop programs, such as browsers and text editors. Many also include utilities for other purposes, such as home entertainment, but are only listed here because the additional functions are not their primary focus.
OS Replacement: provides an option to transfer the cd to the hard drive, or to install an OS in a different form
Education: provides a collection of educational programs, or was created to be used in the educational field
Rescue: provides tools needed for data recovery
Clustering: provides tools for making clusters
Security: contains network security tools
Home Entertainment: geared towards playing video and audio
Gaming: video games!
Medical: contains medical programs
Diagnostics: contains utilities for testing hardware
Firewalls: distributions created to be used as firewalls
Forensics: distributions containing forensic tools
Servers: distributions used for various server functions
Min/Max Size
The min size and max size refer to ISO sizes in megabytes. Many distributions have different size images of their current release. Sizes over 700MB may require overburning to be put onto a CD, or be a LiveDVD ISO. Many LiveCDs can also be copied onto and booted from USB drives.
Architectures
x86: AMD and Intel computers, could include optimizations from the 386 to the Pentium IV to the Athlon XP
x86-64: Computers with chips that use the x86 64-bit extensions, also known as AMD64, EM64T, Intel 64, or x64. These chips include the Athlon64, Opteron, Pentium 4 600 series, Pentium D, Core 2, Core i7 and modern Xeons
PPC: PowerPC chips, including the Apple G3, G4, and G5 (in 32-bit mode), possibly other IBM Power chips
PPC64: PowerPC 64-bit chips, including the Apple G5, possibly other IBM Power chips, such as the one used in the Playstation 3
Eden: LiveCDs specifically made for the VIA Eden platform. Because these are based on the x86 instruction set, x86 LiveCDs may work too.
Xbox: Made for the XBox, may require software or hardware mods to run
IA-64: Itanium and Itanium2 platforms
Sparc64: SUN Sparc 64-bit platform
Alpha: Alpha platform, once made by DEC, then Compaq, then HP
Mips: Some SGI platforms
HPPA: Also known as PA-RISC, made by HP
Comments
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Completely Free Linux OS
Distribution Name: aLinux
Website: http://www.alinux.tv
Download: http://www.alinux.tv/linux-downloads.html
Purpose: Desktop, Home Entertainment, Server
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Hi
I dont find in the livecd list the following BartPE, VistaPE, and Kaspersky Rescue Disk. Is it posssible to add them to the list since some are useful.
Could you add LFU Linux to the list?
Name: LFU
Web Site: http://learnfree.eu/
Download: http://learnfree.eu/archives/84
Wikipedia: http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D0%A1%D0%A3
Min Size: 1181658 KB
Max Size: 2094368 KB
Purpose: Desktop, Education, Rescue
Latest Release: 2009.06
Next Release: 2010.02
This distribution is made in Bulgaria by me and my brother. Its name actually is "УСУ" (in cyrillic), abbreviation from the bulgarian "Учи Свободен с Убунту" (Learn Free with Ubuntu).
Version 3.0 is based on Ubuntu 9.04, but has a lot of customizations and additional software.
It has a lot of educational programs.
The goal of our project is to be useful in the educational sphere, and to be a starting platform for learning Linux.
It can run from DVD or Flash drive (and of course - can be installed on hdd).
There is also a netbook version
Could you add Viper OS to your list?
http://viperamped.com/viewpage.php?page_id=10
Live CD: MirOS BSD
Web: www.mirbsd.org
Purpose: Server
Arch: i386; Sparc
Min Size - 5mb; Max Size - 688mb
Last Release: 2009.10 (live snapshot)
Live CD: paldo Linux
Web: www.paldo.org
Purpose: Live CD Desktop; Installation
Arch: x86; x86_64 in stable, testing, and unstable branches
Min Size - 664mb; Max Size - 697mb
Last Release: 2009.11
Hi,
i am the main maintainer of the shadowcircle linux live distribution. This is a fork of backtrack (so it is focused on security/ pentests like BT), which integrates a set a cool things.
ISO Size: 675MB
URL: http://www.shadowcircle.org
Latest stable Download: http://repos.shadowcircle.org/pub/shadowcircle/RELEASE/1.0/iso/shadowcircle_1.0_RC1.iso
Regards,
Please add hiren boot disk http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd
I don't know if this linux s/w will work as a live cd on my os because I'm using XP and I don't see XP as one of the allowable architecture. I'm using a laptop. Please help.
Hi, would it be possible to add Axiom? http://axiomlinux.tk
Desktop 0S, 417mb ISO, x86 archetecture
Thanks :)
Can you please add pfSense, found at www.pfsense.org?
This is an really fantastic firewall distribution based on FreeBSD, originally forked from m0n0wall. It includes a powerful pf-based firewall rule system, supports NAT and bridging, and has a polished web interface and a plug-in architecture allowing it to be expanded with extra features such as (for example) a web cache and proxy. It can run directly from a LiveCD or USB stick or can install itself to a hard drive if you're happy with it. The main project page is at www.pfsense.org and the download page is here: http://www.pfsense.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
I'm running it on a $200 low-power sub-micro PC, and it does everything which I used to do with a ton of custom scripts/firewall rules and installed packages on a full OpenBSD or FreeBSD install.
P.S. I'll preemptively give it a rating of 99/100, with 1 off only because it doesn't have a dnscache plug-in yet.
I noticed a hiccup of the boost module you're using on your site (Drupal 6.12, simply love it :)).
warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /var/www/www.livecdlist.com/htdocs/sites/all/modules/boost/boost.module on line 513.
How about adding the ZxMameCD live cd? It's a GoblinX/Slackware-based distro for emulation games.
> ZxMameCd Homepage
Could you add Wires Cut Linux? It's designed for developing software without Internet access. So it comes with GCC, Java, Ruby, Python, Lua, LISP, Haskell... It fits onto a CD and only needs 3 GB to install. Based on Xubuntu.
http://yellosoft.us/index.php?id=96
Thanks for your consideration.
New Forensic Live CD - Digital Forensic Live CD - www.digitalforensic.nl
Thank you for including the date of last update. It is helpful in locating and identifying new Live CD's
That's a nice list indeed. There appears to be some heavy JavaScript on the front page (with the list), though. Can it be removed or optimized? Also, is there really no way for registered users to submit entries? At least maybe to fill out a form with specific fields (for manual review/approval) rather than post a comment like I am doing now?
What I'd like added is Openwall GNU/*/Linux, or Owl:
http://www.openwall.com/Owl/
This is primarily a security-enhanced distro for servers (installable), but it is also a live CD. One of the unique properties of the live CD is that it includes a full set of development tools capable of rebuilding the whole system from source (yes, even while CD-booted), and the ISO includes the full source code too. (Of course, additional writable storage, such as a gigabyte of RAM for tmpfs or a hard disk, would be needed for the rebuild to succeed.) The CD is also convenient for rescue/forensics use, and it includes some security testing tools (John the Ripper, Nmap). The ISO sizes are 650-700 MB (x86, x86-64), the download sizes are around 450 MB (for .iso.gz).
Would it be possible to add FireballISO? This is a Firewall-type distro that is built/customized with a Gentoo VMWare virtual machine; it may fit in Servers as well, since it provides network services too. http://fireballiso.sourceforge.net
Nice page.
Could you possibly provide a better way of download links from your various mirrors?
I usually download my CDs or DVD's with wget or DownThemAll as these allow resumes of
aborted downloads due to system and/or provider stream failures.
I'd therefore prefer a link that I can copy that points to a download mirror with
complete path and possibly filename or a list of possible mirrors with complete path.
This way, I can choose a mirror close to my place or a fast mirror or what other
decisions I may make, depending on where I am and what specific needs and download
speeds (bandwidth) are available.
Also, with full mirror links, I can generate a list of downloads I would like to
run over night with wget or other special download software that my operating
system supports.
Examples:
Gentoo x86 minimal install-CD:
ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/mirrors/gentoo/releases/x86/current/instal...
Gentoo x86 livecd i686:
ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/mirrors/gentoo/releases/x86/2008.0/livecd/...
Knoppix V6.01 CD EN:
ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/mirrors/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V6.0.1-ADRIANE_V1....
Knoppix V6.01 CD DE:
ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/mirrors/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V6.0.1-ADRIANE_V1....
Newest linux kernel v2.6:
ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/mirrors/kernel.org/v2.6/linux-2.6.29.1.tar...
Thanks,
linux4all
I'm not able to keep links for every release up to date. The best I can do right now is to link to each project's general download info page. From those pages you can use wget to download the disk images.
I guess that will have to do meanwhile and help out. I know it's quite an effort to maintain your existing list that even I wouldn't have the time to manage that, so I'll just fill you in on my ideas.
Of course, as this is your list, you decide if, when and at what priority and extent you get my ideas working ;-)
Hey, maybe other users of your site may want to comment on my ideas or help you get your list completed?
##
My next idea is an optical usage enhancement request to ease scrolling your list with appropriate mouse/trackball hardware, for example mouse spinning wheel, an in the meantime standard hardware feature. Could you provide an extra link for us scroll wheel users or reconfigure your list to use just one long page to scroll up and down?
The current setting doesn't fit on one screen page anyway, so why did you split the list in the first case? Another bad side-effect of your split list is that it's hard to guess where to refind a once used link, so I'd probably have to go through all 4 pages again to find it.
##
Another idea would be tripple-featured, to append info to the list on "minimum RAM" and "minimum CPU" required for distro's resulting in: "Name, Ratings, Average Rating, Min Size, Max Size, Min RAM, Min CPU, Purpose, Last Release".
This info is very important, as many distros have minimum requirements which are interesting for people like me also installing many linux derivates on slower CPU's like 286, 386, 486 with very low memory down to as little as 2mb to 4mb on x86 and other hardware. There's a lot of old hardware in the world that's still worth of running with linux, even though not efficient enough anymore for Windows and some specialized huge Unix systems.
Also, some distro's like Puppylinux have minimum requirements that may be underrun if it does not matter that speed suffers and more swapping occurs. Example: I got Puppy v4.00-v4.12 running on a Pentium I-133 with 64mb RAM and 256mb swap-partition even though the distro requires a minimum of 128mb officially, showing a potential user which distro may suit his/her hardware resource needs, chances for running into trouble due to hardware restriction testing or straining. Some distro's are friendly with "min RAM" not being enough, other are tricky or die when trying. It's up to the user to test it then. But it would be good to know about the minimum requirements prior to download.
Missing out on the tripple-feature? Here it is:
To ease things for you, you might update the features as time comes, so that the distro's lists "min RAM" and "min CPU" data fields can be left free or an asterisk (*) for distro's you or your users haven't researched yet, letting the user know the asterisk means research has to be done.
And, you could encourage your users to send you an email of their researched distro's minimum RAM and CPU specs as a user response, and additionally perhaps in two extra fields when they rate the linux version.
Mark the one's researched by you in green colour, the one's reported by users in red colour and eventually turn them green when you stumble across that website and have verified it yourself. I guess you'll have to manage access to the new fields in your list that when you have reviewed linux distro's fields green that nobody can turn them red again without your notice.
Hope you manage to add these ideas some time soon ;-)
Be well.
Nice, useful page. Any chance you can add Crunch Bang? http://crunchbanglinux.org/
Added, Thanks.