Review and brief description of the popular and most useful assemblies of boot disks (Live CD/DVD) based on Linux. These are indispensable and free tools that are always useful to have on hand. Using such Live CDs, you can encrypt and restore information, partition drives, use a working system without installation with a large selection of free software, and much more. Distributions considered: Knoppix, Kali Linux, Tails, Ultimate Boot CD, AVG Rescue CD and others.

As an introduction

What is a Live CD-DVD disc or build? is a set of software that does not require installation on local media (hard drive or other), but allows you to use the programs immediately after downloading from removable media with a Live distribution.

It’s not difficult to remember that Live means “life”, “live” in English, that is, we booted from such a Live media and the system came to life, immediately becoming suitable for use with all the software that comes with the kit.

Assemblies of popular distributions (not only Linux), as a rule, can be obtained in the form of a file with the “iso” extension, which is immediately suitable for burning onto a blank CD or DVD using programs such as K3B, Brasero, Nero (Windows) and others.

Also, such a file can be uploaded to a flash drive via direct byte-by-byte writing, for example using the “dd” command in Linux. Perhaps I’ll tell you about uploading ISO onto a flash drive in more detail at the end of the article...

Now let's move on directly to the review of useful distributions that can be loaded in Live mode and used for a variety of purposes. Let's start with the largest and very useful distribution - Knoppix.

Peculiarities:

• Size approximately 4GB;
• More than 2GB of compressed software;
• It is based on Debian GNU Linux;
• LXDE graphical shell;
• Full package of office programs LibreOffice;
• Low system requirements (Intel/AMD, 128MB+ RAM, any video card).

The Linux distribution is quite large in size (about 4GB), with a lot of varied software for all occasions. This is one of the first Live-CD distributions based on Debian. Knoppix can be downloaded from DVD and Flash disks, and can also be installed on your hard drive as needed. The development is carried out by Klaus Knopper and the Knoppix community.

So, let's boot, I want to warn you right away - when loading the system, do not be alarmed by the voice from the speakers, it is also present after the work is completed (Power OFF).

I will not list all the programs that are included in the Knoppix DVD; I will give only a basic selection of what caught my eye during the inspection so that you have an idea of ​​what we are dealing with and what features are available:

ClamTK, Emacs, Kate, Gedit, KeePassX, KGpg, LeafPad, ownCloud desktop sync client, Time Tracker, GCompriss (interactive training for children, games), KAlgebra, KGeagraphy, KLetters, KStars, SciLab, 50+ games, Dia, Gimp, Inkscape, KRuler, KSnaphot, LibreCAD, Simple Scan, Okular, XSane, Chromium, Ekiga soft phone, IceDove, KGet, KTorrent, LinPhone, Pidgin, Remmina, Transmission, Vidalia, WPA GUI, XChat, GPRS/UMTS Connect, Knoppix Firewall, Samba Server, SSH Server, Tor Proxy, Bitcoin, Dictionary, KMail, KOrganizer, Libre Office Suite, BlueFish Editor, Eclipse, Geany, phpMyAdmin, QT4 studio, Amarok, Audacity, K3B, Me TV, Minitube, OpenShot video editor, SMPlayer, Sound Juicer, WinFF, VLC, Disk Usage Analyzer, KSysGuard, System Monitor, VIrtualBox, DosBox, Wine...

Well, a lot of things, programs for working with a scanner, viewing and processing various documents and images, programming, working with network services, multimedia, system utilities, security and encryption programs, storing passwords, virtual machines, regular and torrent downloaders, several dozen a wide variety of games and this is just briefly...

Official page in English: http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

Kali Linux (ex BackTrack)

Peculiarities:

• The size is approximately 3GB, there is also a mini version;
• More than 600 programs and utilities;
• Based on Debian GNU Linux;
• GNOME graphical shell.

The project was created as a result of the merger of such tools as WHAX and Auditor Security Collection. The creators of the project are Mati Aharoni and Max Moser. Currently the distribution is based on Debian GNU Linux.

Kali Linux is a Swiss knife of an information security specialist with a huge number of programs and utilities for testing, collecting information, detecting potential vulnerabilities, working with network services and resources, conducting software and hardware examination...

Here are some of the common programs that are in the distribution: Gparted, TrueCrypt, Arduino IDE, Ettercap, Iceweasel (Firefox), SQLite Database Browser, VLC, Brasero Disk Burbner, Sound Recorder.

Basically, a large mass of programs and utilities concern information security, network technologies and data processing. In the screenshot above you can see the main sections of software in kali Linux; here is a list of the most famous programs:

• Nmap (a very powerful and feature-rich network scanner)
• Wireshark (traffic and network protocol analyzer)
• THC Hydra (multi-function cracker) FTP, POP3, IMAP, Telnet, HTTP Auth, NNTP, VNC, ICQ, PCNFS, CISCO, Samba, LDAP)
• John The Ripper (calculating a password using a hash using brute force)
• Kismet (802.11b WLAN network analyzer)
• Ettercap (in simple words - breaking local networks, ARP-spoofing and other miracles)
• Metasploit (creating and debugging exploits)
• Sqlmap (tests using SQL injections)
• Aircrack-ng (wireless networks - detection, analysis, pentest)
• Reaver-WPS (checking Wi-Fi routers for vulnerabilities in the WPS protocol, selecting 8 digits)
• OWASP (powerful framework for conducting pentests)
• Maltego (collection and organization of information from various databases, Whois and other publicly available resources and services)

A very powerful distribution for professionals and those interested in information security.

Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System)

Peculiarities:

• The distribution size is approximately 900MB;
• Based on Debian GNU Linux;
• GNOME graphical shell;
• Anonymization of traffic through TOR.

A very interesting distribution based on Debian GNU Linux. The main goal is to ensure privacy and anonymity when working online. Tails development is sponsored by the Tor Project. The system works by booting from a disk or flash drive and does not leave any traces after operation. The Tails operating system is recommended for use by the Free Press Foundation as a secure OS in terms of communications and data processing.

Programs that can be found in Tails:

Archive manager, GTK Hash, gEdit, KeePassX, ScreenShot, GIMP, Inkscape, Libre Office suite, Document Viewer, Simple Scan, Claws Mail, Electrum Bitcoin wallet, Pidgin, Tor Browser, Audacity, Brasero Disc Burner, Movie Player, Pitivi Video Editor , Sound Recorder, Traverso(multitrack audio editor), MAT (metadata anonymization tool), virtual keyboard, PWGen and others.

Puppy Linux

Peculiarities:

• Small distribution size (100-150 MB);
• Low minimum system requirements (Pentium CPU, 32MB+ RAM);
• There are builds based on Debian, Ubuntu, Slackware, Arch Linux;
• Graphical environment Quirky (based on JWM, Openbox and Fbpane window managers).

Puppy Linux is a distribution developed by Australian professor Barry Cowler. Due to its small size, the distribution is completely loaded into memory (if it is more than 64MB) and works very quickly even on an old computer.

The Puppy Linux distribution received its name in honor of the pet, which the professor called “Puppy” (puppy). Considering the small size of the distribution, it can even be written to an “ancient” flash drive of 256-512 MB in size or to a 3.5-inch CD.

List of software that can be found in Lucid Puppy Linux (Lupu):

Gdmap Graphics Disk Usage, Inkscape lite, mtPaint, Gcolor2 color chooser, PupSnap screen capture, Xsane image scanner, AbiWord, Geany, NicoEdit, ePDFView, puppyPDFconvert, Bcrypt, PureFTPd, Uget, Linux Firewall, PMirroget, Psip (VOIP + AIM), Pwsget, Transmission, XChat, gFTP, FFConvert, Gnome Mplayer, AlsaMixer, Pmusic, XineDVD, mhWaveEdit, Pburn CD/DVD writer, pup Radio, Guvcview webcam viewer, Browser Installer (Firefox, Chromium, Opera...), Sylpheed email. ..

Official website of the distribution: http://puppylinux.org

Finnix Linux

Peculiarities:

• Small size (approximately 100-160 MB)
• Based on Debian GNU Linux
• One of the latest kernels at the moment is 4.0 (version Finnix 111).
• No graphical shell, only console
• Minimum resources for startup (32MB+ RAM)

One of the oldest Live Linux distributions, development began back in 1999 (the first release of version 0.03 appeared publicly around 2000). Positions itself as a Live Linux distribution for system administrators.

At this time, the distribution is supported and developed, the latest version at the time of writing this article is Finnix 111 (June 2015). A new version of the distribution is released approximately every 3 months. Booting from CD, Flash and network (PXE) is possible.

After loading, we receive a greeting in the console and brief information about the system:

The most necessary programs for administration are installed: mc, smartctl, nmap, bzip, perl, python and others. Everything else that is needed can be installed from the repository.

A big plus is the presence of a fresh kernel 4.0 - this is a guarantee that most of the new equipment will be detected correctly, and even on a brand new server with a new LAN, WLAN, SATA controller, and you will be able to make a backup copy over the network, tinker with the installed system and deal with problems.

Peculiarities:

• Size approximately 600 MB
• Many utilities for working with hardware and peripherals
• Integrated image of the free Parted Magic (2013_08_01)

A good set of utilities and software for working with BIOS, stress test and microprocessor information, diagnostics/repair/cloning/secure erase/partitioning/recovering information from hard drives, diagnostics and collection of information about RAM and computer peripherals.

An even bigger advantage of the distribution is that it integrates an image of the still free Parted Magic assembly, with which you can split your hard drive into partitions, clone them, view and backup data from different file systems, including NTFS.

A list of all programs that are available in the assembly can be seen on the official website, I will say one thing - there are many of them and for different occasions. The list of software that is integrated into Parted Magic also deserves special attention:

GParted, Clonezilla, TrueCrypt, SCite, SpaceFM, Leafpad, wxHexEditor, Document Viewer, Mirage Image Viewer, Asunder CD Ripper, Audacious, ISO MAster, Xfburn, Firefox, Firewall, FTP, gFTP, XChat, NetWag, Putty, pyNeighborhood, Remmina, SSHFS Network Directories, ELinks, VNCViewer, ZeNmap, Change Windows Password, ClamTK, Disk Erasing tools, grub-doctor, GSmartControl, Lilo Setup, LSHW, PCCMOS Cleaner, PCDiskEraser, PCLoginNow, PCRegedit, PhotoRec, Psensor, Resize NTFS with Bad Sectors, System Stability Tester, TestDisk, UDPCast Disk Clonning, USB Flash Boot...

A good set of programs that is useful to have with you. You can write a separate article for each program in the list; the capabilities of the distribution definitely deserve attention.

You can download the distribution on the website of the same name: https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

CloneZilla Live (clone, backup, restore)

Peculiarities:

• Size about 200MB;
• Backup both to local storage devices and network storage;
• Support for multiple file systems;
• Ability to split and encrypt the resulting backup image;
• Low system requirements (x86, x86-64 microprocessor, 192MB+ RAM).

Software that allows you to clone disks, save images of both entire disks with their entire structure, and individual partitions on the disk. On the site you can download a Live image with the CloneZilla program for burning to a CD or flash drive, thus we get a powerful tool for backing up and restoring disks with multiple capabilities.

CloneZilla was developed by Steven Shiau at the National Center for High Performance Computing. CloneZilla Live is a Linux image along with a program for running from removable media.

The program supports creating backup copies and saving their data to local storage devices or to remote storages by transferring data via SSH, Samba or NFS protocols.

Supported file systems: FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, reiser4, btrfs, f2fs, XFS, JFS, VMFS and HFS+, UFS, VMFS3, VMFS5. Nice list, isn't it?)

It is possible that, after reading the reviews above, you have a question: since CloneZilla is available in other distributions, why is there another separate one for this program? - everything is simple, it is a very useful and self-sufficient program that is used at the right time and with great responsibility. In addition, the fresh Live-CD image will have a fresh kernel and nothing extra that could interfere with or spoil the process of backing up or restoring important data.

Peculiarities:

• Small distribution size (about 160 MB);
• Treating the file system for viruses using AVG antivirus;
• As a bonus, the kit includes additional useful utilities.

A small gift from the developers of the AVG antivirus - an emergency recovery disk based on GNU Linux. The work takes place in console mode with a dialog interface - everything is simple and clear.

In addition to virus detection and cleaning tools, some useful programs are integrated into the image: TrueCrypt, MC, Win Reg Editor, DOS Fix MBR, TestDisk, Smartctl, PhotoRec, Ping, links.

In general, you will be able to mount encrypted partitions, view and make changes in the file manager, edit some Windows registry branches, fix the MBR, check file systems and disks for errors and then correct them, view the SMART parameter table for the hard drive, and restore erased photos.

Caine (Computer Forensics Linux Live Distro)

CAINE (Computer Aided INvestigative Environment) is a project of Italian developers, an image of a bootable operating system based on GNU/Linux for digital forensics.

As part of the image you will receive:

• Graphical environment and console power;
• Support for new equipment;
• A huge number of tools for conducting digital forensic research under Linux;
• A collection of programs for working with Windows systems (via Wine), for example, there are utilities from NirSoft;
• A set of programs that may be useful for encrypting, transferring and restoring data;
• Internet browser, audio/video players, file managers;
• and much more...

The entire CAINE project is built on OpenSource software, the utilities included in the image package for working with Windows are freeware.

Brief list of programs:

• Analytics: Photorec, Autospy, NBTempo, TKDiff, Fred, XAll, Mixed scripts, Stegosuite, XDeview, RegRipper, QPhotorec, Ophcrack, RecuperaBit, TestDisk, BEView, Recoll, Log2Timeline, Afro, Brtfrsc, Mobius
• Database: Sqliteman, SqlParse, DB Browser for SQLite
• Drives: Guymager, XMount-GUI, ddrescueview, dvdisaster, TestDisk, Disk Image Mounter, DDRescue-GUI, XHFS, UnBlock, IMount, SafeCopy, VHDinfo, VHDIMount, RecuperaBit, APFS-FUSE
• Hashing: QuickHash, gtkhash, PDF Scanner, PEFrame, Yara, VolDiff
• Memory: Inception, Volatility, Memdump, VShot
• Mobile devices: gMTP, LibMobileDevice, ADB, Blackberry scripts, ILoot
• Network tools: Remote File System Mounter, Wireshark, Zenmap, Netdiscovery
• OSINT: TinfoLeak, TheHarvester, Infoga, Carbon 14, OSINT-SPY
• Timeline: NB Tempo, NB TempoX, Log2Timeline, PSteal
• Accessories: Archive Manager, Backups, Character Map, Disks, Engrampa Archive Manager, MATE Calculator, MATE Font Viewer, MATE Search tool, Midnight COmmander editor, Passwords and Keys, Plank, Pluma text editor, Recoll, Redshift, Take screenshot, Vim, Xarchiver, Caja
• Graphics: Document Viewer, Eye of MATE Image Viewer, GIMP, LibreOffice Draw, MATE color selection, Mirage, Print Preview, Simple Scan, Stegosuite
• Internet: Mozilla Firefox, Oracle Java 8 WEB, Mozilla Thunderbird, Transmission (torrent), Network, PuTTY SSH Client, Remmins, RDP client, Wireshark, Shrew Soft VPN access manager, Zenmap, Gigolo
• Office: Atril Document Viewer, Document viewer, LibreOffice (Calc+Draw+Impress+Writer), MATE Dictionary, Print Preview
• Programming: Geany, CHex, Icon Browser, QT 5 Assistant, QT5 Linguist, QT5 Designer, wxHex Editor, GtkHash, Jeex, Sqliteman
• Sound and video: Audacity, Brasero, Cheese, Mediainfo, recordMyDesktop, Rhythmbox, Sound, VLC media player, Screenshot
• and a lot more, both graphical and console programs...

Distribution website: http://livecdlist.com/

Burning ISO to USB flash drive in Linux

We've sorted out the distributions, now we need to figure out how to quickly write this or that distribution onto a flash drive for testing and use.

In Linux this process is very simple. First, connect the flash drive and find out what name it received in the list of block devices. We run the command to display a list of these devices:

The program output will contain a list of all data storage devices, but we are looking for our Flash drive by size, for example, we inserted an 8GB flash drive into a free USB port:

Sdc 8:32 1 7.5G 0 disk └─sdc1 8:33 1 481M 0 part

We see that our drive is called “sdc”. You may have “sdb” “sdd” or something else, it all depends on how many drives and disk partitions you currently have in the system. The size is displayed slightly less than 8GB, namely 7.5GB - this is normal, it is also clear that there is only one partition on the disk - sdc1.

Let's say that you downloaded some distribution and saved it as an iso file in your home folder, for example: /home/user8/super_linux.iso.

Please note that the size of the Flash drive must be larger than the size of the downloaded ISO image file. For example, we downloaded a file of 810 MB in size and are uploading it to a flash drive of 2 GB or 8 GB in size.

Recording is done with one command:

Dd if=/home/user8/super_linux.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=10M

We specified the “if” parameter (input file, where to get the data from) and assigned it the path to the downloaded iso file, and the “of” parameter (output file, where to write the data) assigned the path to the file device, which is our Flash drive . Parameter "bs" - sets the size of data chunks for sequential recording.

Now all that remains is to wait until the recording is completed, the command does not output anything to the console until the process is completed, and the activity can be observed by the blinking indicator in the flash drive itself.

Attention!!! The dd command writes directly to disk; if you mix up the value for the "of" parameter, you can accidentally erase the scratch disk. Be extremely careful.

Burn ISO to CD/DVD in Linux

To burn a GNU/Linux disk image (ISO), you can use GUI programs: Brasero or K3B.

You can install these programs with the commands:

Apt-get install brasero apt-get install k3b

Burning ISO to Flash under Windows

To create a bootable flash drive based on GNU/Linux or another operating system under MS Windows (98, XP, 7, 8, 10), you will need a program that can correctly write an ISO image by sector.

There is a project called RUFUS with the slogan “Create bootable USB drives the easy way” - this is a program that will help you solve this problem under Windows.

RUFUS is free open source software that can format and create bootable USB flash and SD cards.

How to test a distribution without recording to media

It is possible that before recording to a flash drive or disk, you will want to test and dig into the contents of the distribution to make sure that this is what you need. For such purposes, it is convenient to use a virtual machine by mounting the downloaded iso image into a virtual CD drive.

• Oracle VirtualBox (www.virtualbox.org)

This software is free and cross-platform, you can use it freely on Linux, Windows, MacOS.

Conclusion

All distributions presented in the review are free software, you can use them completely freely for the benefit of yourself and other people. Thanks to the developers for such valuable and excellent Linux-based tools!

Today's antivirus solutions are quite reliable and can protect you from almost all of the world's most common threats. However, there is no guarantee that you will be completely safe unless you are careful online and keep your antivirus software running at all times.

You simply can't plan for everything, especially when it comes to zero-day threats, but that's not your fault. When you are already infected, there is no time to look for the culprits; you need to get rid of the virus as quickly as possible before it has time to ruin your system. After all, no one wants to deal with the tedious process of a full system restore. If the malware you caught is preventing you from using a tool, then perhaps you should take a look at Ubuntu Live CD

Antivirus on Linux?

Although there are several antivirus solutions available for Linux, they are not designed to combat viruses for Linux. Since there are practically no viruses for Linux, they detect viruses for Windows. In fact, the difference is only in the environment used, in our case it is the environment, instead of Windows.

How it works?

The great thing about the Ubuntu Live CD is that you can do absolutely everything on it, including installing the programs you need, even if it's just running in your computer's RAM. This means you can launch an Ubuntu Live CD, install an antivirus program, and then run a full scan of your Windows files. The antivirus program should detect and remove the threats it finds, even if the Windows operating system is not running in the background. This is an excellent way out of this situation, since the simultaneous operation of Windows OS and Linux antivirus can lead to blocking of the antivirus.

Steps

As I said, the process is quite simple. You will need to first download a copy of Ubuntu from the official website. You will have the choice between downloading via or using a torrent client. Torrent downloads should be faster, but not all networks allow them, as many illegal software downloads are made using this protocol. However, downloading Ubuntu using a torrent is absolutely normal and completely legal. Then, you will need to burn the image to a CD or upload it to .

To burn the image to a CD, you will simply need to right-click on the .iso file you downloaded and burn the .ISO using Windows 7

The application will do all the work for you automatically. To burn the ISO file to you can use UNetbootin.

If you want, you can also use the simple instructions right on the official Ubuntu website to burn DVDs or move the image to a USB drive. You should at least look at the recommendations, even if you don't intend to use them.

At the next stage, you need to boot your system from the storage medium you created with the Ubuntu Live CD on board. This can be done by entering your system's BIOS by continuously pressing the F11, Escape or Delete buttons while you have just turned on the computer. After this, you will need to move to the boot tab and select DVD or USB drive as your primary boot device. Then, you need to press F10 to save the settings and restart the computer. You can also follow Ubuntu's instructions again, their website explains everything in detail on how to do this.

Once downloaded, you will need to navigate to the Ubuntu Application Center and find there "clamtk". When this application is found, install it. Clamtk is a graphical user interface for Clam Antivirus software, which is the most popular open source antivirus solution.

Although Clamtk has a mechanism for updating anti-virus databases, it updates them only once a day and cannot be launched manually without using the installation wizard. To go through the installation wizard you need: “Advanced” –> “Rerun antivirus setup wizard”, and then select "Manual" instead of "Automatic". Then click on “Help” –> “Check for Updates” to install the latest updates.

If you've never used Ubuntu before, the menus are located on the top bar, and the antivirus application itself is in focus, which is very similar to the Mac. You can avoid using the installation wizard to update the databases if you simply open a terminal and run the command: sudo freshclam

After the updates are downloaded, click on the buttons “Scan” –> “Recursive Scan” and select the Windows partition to scan. After running the scan, you will have to wait some time for a complete scan and detection of malicious files. Remove all malware found and simply restart your computer with a normal boot, and you will return to your usual Windows operating system, completely free of viruses. If for some reason you do not want to use this antivirus, then there are other popular options like.

Conclusion

Viruses and other malware can cause a lot of trouble and can sometimes be quite difficult to remove. However, knowing some very useful secrets, you can save a lot of time and nerves when working with a computer.

In case all methods have already been tried, you can always use Ubuntu Live CD to back up your files before doing a full system restore. By the way, this is a good opportunity to take a look at Linux, maybe after that it will become your new operating system!

Linux is a unique open source operating system that has many unique features and capabilities. What important feature do other operating systems not have? Of course Live mode. Live USB is the operating mode of the distribution from a flash drive; Live CD or Live DVD works from a disk. Data from the media is loaded into the computer's RAM, and the distribution works without installation on a hard drive or SSD.

Today, people are abandoning disks in favor of USB flash drives, so today we will consider the best Live distributions (Live CD, Live DVD and Live USB essentially do not differ in the internal structure of the image, so you can try all the distributions from our list in Live mode on supported types of drives).

This distribution made it onto our list of "Best Live USB Linux Distributions" for at least one reason. Ubuntu at one time already knew how to work in Live mode, when other distributions could only dream of it. In Live mode, Ubuntu clearly demonstrates almost all the capabilities and features of the Linux operating system.

In general, Live mode in Ubuntu is very convenient for beginners, since most people switch to Linux from Windows, and the interface of the Ubuntu distribution is completely different. In Live mode, the user has the opportunity not only to inspect programs, but also to fully get acquainted with the Unity environment.

This distribution includes a lot of pre-installed software (browser, multimedia, office suite, email client, and others), which you can also use in Live mode. The package also includes a driver manager in which you can easily install the drivers you need.

In general, almost everything has already been done for you; if you are a beginner and want to try Linux, then you can safely burn the image to a flash drive and experiment.

2. Netrunner

The Netrunner Linux distribution focuses on the KDE Plasma desktop environment and comes with a huge amount of pre-installed software. In addition to the standard set, you will find programs such as Skype, Wine, Steam, VitrualBox, VLC and GIMP.

Note: Steam and VirtualBox will not work properly in Live mode for obvious reasons.

Why is Netrunner included in our list of the best Live USB Linux distributions? The fact is that the developers of the Netrunner distribution managed to optimize the performance of KWin on low-power machines, which also makes this distribution ideal for working in Live mode.

The KDE desktop environment itself in this distribution, in principle, has not undergone any special changes, but they still exist. Along with the standard KDE panel, Netrunner now has a sidebar for quicker access to media controls. In addition, you will be able to discover many themes and settings that you will not find in other distributions with the KDE environment.

3. BunsenLabs Linux

Remember CrunchBang? Eh... The project, unfortunately, is dead. Fortunately, it has now come to life in the form of the Linux distribution BunsenLabs. What is this distribution? BunsenLabs is based on Debian Jessie and uses the Openbox window manager with the tint2 panel and the Conky system monitor.

As part of BunsenLabs you can find a huge number of themes and configurations for Conky. So making your desktop the way you want will be easier. You can also find tons of customization ideas on the BunsenLabs user forums.

This distribution can run on 32-bit, 64-bit and even ARM computers.

4. Porteus

Porteus is a fairly lightweight Linux distribution (about 300 megabytes). A feature of this distribution is its modular structure. Unlike most Linux distributions, which rely on a package manager, Porteus uses pre-compiled modules that can be quickly integrated into a running system.

Once you are finished working with a module, you can disable it and the module will be removed from the directory structure. With this system you only use what you need. You can load modules, store and connect them whenever needed.

It's also worth mentioning that Porteus is stored in a compressed form, although decompression occurs very quickly. Porteus has also redesigned its boot scripts to improve startup and shutdown speeds, so you have the makings of an ideal day-to-day Linux experience in Live mode.

5.AV Linux

This distribution is designed specifically for creating video, audio and graphics, in general, for all kinds of creativity. AV Linux is not a regular distribution, it is based on the Debian Stretch test branch. The developers chose the XFCE 4 shell as the desktop environment. Since this is a distribution for creativity, various programs for creating audio and video are preinstalled. Among the multimedia-oriented programs you will find Ardour, Audacity, Blender, Cinelerra, Handbrake, Hydrogen, Kdenlive, MuseScore, OpenShot and VLC Media Player.

But in addition to all this, this operating system uses a third-party Linux kernel "RT" and Jack Audio Connection Kit for reduced audio latency. So if you want to do creative work under the Linux operating system, then the AV Linux distribution is perfect for this.

6. Puppy Linux

This distribution made it onto our list of the best Linux distributions for USB for two reasons. The first of them is the ability to fully work from the drive, and the second is that this distribution is designed for very weak or cheap computers.

There are three versions of the Puppy Linux distribution. One of them is Slacko Puppy, which is based on Slackware, one of the oldest Linux distributions. Although Slackware is not as popular among ordinary users, Slacko Puppy is used by many people, while understanding what this version of the distribution is based on.

The next version is built using the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS package base and is designed for more powerful computers. This edition of the distribution is called TahrPup.

The third version is the main Puppy Linux project, which was originally founded by Barry Kauler. The latest versions, codenamed Quirky, were developed with the goal of further running the distribution on a USB drive.

7. GParted Live

Hard drives are divided into parts called partitions. You can have different sections for different purposes. For example, on one partition you have the system installed, on the second partition you store photos, documents, videos and music, and the third partition is swap. In any case, you will someday need to resize them, merge them, or split them.

For the Linux operating system there is a very good partition management program - GParted. But what if you need to, for example, resize the partition on which you have the system installed? This cannot be done without unmounting the partition. That is why the GParted Live distribution was created. Just be careful, please. Any wrong action can lead to big problems.

conclusions

So we looked at our small list of Live USB distributions. I will be very interested to read your comments. You can also ask your questions, I will try to answer.

If you need to install the Linux operating system on your computer, then the first thing you will need to complete this task is a bootable flash drive with the selected distribution of this operating system. For such purposes, the Linux Live USB Creator utility is perfect.

Linux Live USB Creator is a free utility for creating a bootable USB drive with a distribution of the well-known free Linux OS.

If you have not yet downloaded the Linux OS distribution, then this task can be performed directly in the program window. You only need to select the desired version of the distribution, after which you will be asked to download the system image yourself from the official website or automatically (directly in the program window).

Copying data to a flash drive from a CD

If you have a Linux distribution on disk and you need to transfer it to a flash drive, making it bootable, then the Linux Live USB Creator program provides a special function that allows you to complete this task, completely transferring information from the CD to a bootable flash drive.

Using an image file

Let's assume you already have a downloaded Linux operating system image file on your computer. To start creating a bootable flash drive, you only need to specify this file in the program, after which you can start writing the image to a USB drive.

Running Linux from Windows

Another interesting feature is a program that allows you to run Linux on a computer running Windows OS. However, for this function to work, you will need an Internet connection (to download additional files of the VirtualBox virtual machine). In the future, Linux will run on a computer running Windows directly from a flash drive.

Advantages:

1. Convenient and modern interface with Russian language support;

2. An expanded set of functions for creating bootable media (compared to the Universal USB Installer program);

3. The utility is distributed absolutely free of charge.

Flaws:

1. Not found.

Linux Live USB Creator is the ideal tool if you decide to learn from your own experience what Linux OS is. The program will allow you to both create a bootable USB flash drive for the normal installation of this operating system, and create a Live-CD to run it from a flash drive using a virtual machine.

Review of the top five Linux Live distributions as of 2010

Linux is so cool that you don't even need to install it for it to work. One of the popular areas of application for Linux is the creation of Live CDs containing a full-fledged desktop environment or, for example, a set of utilities for system administration and/or recovery. Not sure which Live CD to choose? Don't panic! In this article we will look at the five best, in my opinion, Live CD distributions, and you will at least be able to start somewhere.

For a number of reasons, the popularity of Live CDs has declined slightly over the past few years. The main reason is that people preferred Live CD due to the complexity of the installation process. Not long ago, Linux was not that easy to install, much less now. And many users preferred to use the Live CD for a while before installing Linux as a second system or even replacing Windows with it.

Please note that although we're talking about Live CDs in this article, that doesn't mean you're limited to using CDs. Many popular Live distributions have DVD versions with a huge amount of software included. Moreover, most Live distributions can boot from a USB flash drive without any problems. It is very useful if you, say, own a netbook or simply have nothing at hand except a flash drive.

By what criteria were the distributions selected? I think you have already noticed that there is not a single popular distribution in the list (meaning Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Slackware, etc), while the distributions presented in this article are their direct descendants. Although Ubuntu, Linux Mint and others have their own Live CDs or DVDs, they are not intended for long-term use as a Live system. I’m sure there are people who manage to use such distributions for everyday work, but, be that as it may, they were originally designed specifically for installation on a hard drive, and not for working in live mode.

When I selected the best Live distributions out there, I considered the following criteria:

• development activity;
• performing useful and necessary tasks;
• “useful and necessary tasks” should be so for a wide range of users.

I did not include in the article distributions that are “tailored” for rather specific tasks and are unlikely to be of interest to 98% of Linux users. There is, for example, dyne:bolic, a distribution that is likely to be of great interest to those involved in multimedia creation. Are there many such people? And then, the frequency of its updates leaves much to be desired, so I still wouldn’t consider it.

Anyway, enough chatting, let's take a look at these five that occupy the first positions in my Live CD rating!

Knoppix

It's impossible to imagine a Live CD list without Knoppix. Perhaps the very first Live CD, Knoppix is ​​definitely the most successful and actively developed Live distribution.

Based on Debian, Knoppix offers LXDE as its desktop environment (by default) and contains most (if not all) of the software you'll need to get started. This distribution is updated very often and supports a huge variety of equipment. Knoppix was originally designed to run only from disk, but it became so popular that people started installing it on their hard drive.

Keep in mind that you won't see the same set of applications in Knoppix as in Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE and the like. Knoppix is ​​performance-oriented and uses Debian's default applications. For example, you will receive Iceweasel instead of Firefox. If you need a Live CD with high performance, Knoppix is ​​the way to go!

When you download Knoppix, you may be a little confused about which file to download. Find the latest version, but be careful when reading the file names. The current release of Knoppix is ​​6.2.1. If, for example, you need an English release, download the file KNOPPIX_V6.2.1CD-2010-01-31-EN.iso. If you need a release in German, then your file is KNOPPIX_V6.2.1CD-2010-01-31-DE.iso. If you want a DVD version of Knoppix, go to the catalog knoppix-dvd.

Among the images for download you will see Knoppix ADRIANE. This is a version with functionality for the blind or people with limited vision. If you accidentally downloaded this image, but want the "regular" version of Knoppix, you don't have to waste time downloading another image again. Using "cheat codes" you can force Knoppix to boot into the traditional environment. "Cheat codes" are kernel options that are passed to the ISOLINUX bootloader. With them you can specify the language, select the keyboard type, time zone and force Knoppix to ignore some hardware checks at boot stage if there are any problems with it.

Puppy Linux

For working on older hardware or for users who prefer minimalism, there is Puppy Linux. The Pupyy Linux image is less than 200 megabytes in size and can fit entirely in RAM if there is enough of it. Puppy should work great on almost any hardware.

By downloading Puppy Linux, you will get an excellent desktop with a browser, media player, word processor, terminal emulator, file manager, drawing tools and a bunch of other useful things. True, you will not have the traditional applications found in most distributions. You won't get Firefox and OpenOffice. Instead you will have Midori and AbiWord. You can also install the applications you need if necessary.

Do you want to look at this miracle? Download the latest release from here. If you want to put it on your hard drive, no problem!

There is also a good version of Puppy in nature, called Quirky. It is built using the Woof system and can be quite interesting for people who like to experiment.

Clonezilla Live

Computers come and go, but data does not. I love Linux because it runs on almost any hardware. Linux runs great on older computers, which in my opinion are more reliable than modern ones. Of course, the same cannot be said about low-quality memory or dying hard drives. It is good practice to think that any system is one keystroke away from sudden death, and plan accordingly.

I use Dropbox to store documents, this allows me to make sure I have a copy of my important files such as photos, purchased music, photos and work notes; in general, everything that can be crammed into 50 gigabytes. I copy the remaining data every few weeks using Clonezilla to a backup hard drive. So if my main HDD suddenly dies, I can quickly replace it and copy my data back from the backup one.

Clonezilla is based on Linux and uses free software. Do you have machines running on different Windows and Mac platforms and need to back up data from them? Clonezilla supports x86 32-bit and 64-bit systems, and can work with almost any file system. Even if you encounter some exotic file system that is not supported by Clonezilla, you can always use dd to copy the contents of the file system, byte-by-byte. If the file system is supported by Clonezilla, you will save time, since only the data will be copied, and not entire partitions, including free space.

There are two versions of Clonezilla: one is designed for installation on servers, and the second is a Live version. If you administer a network of several computers, then Clonezilla is what you need. Simply boot from the Live CD and you can back up to locally connected hard drives or over the network to a server.

SystemRescueCD

I am a big fan of this distribution and try to always have the latest version of SystemRescueCD on a flash drive or CD. I don't use it often, but when the need arises, this Live CD helps me a lot.

SystemRescueCD is intended mainly for performing recovery work on Linux systems, however, in principle, it can also be used on others running on x86 platforms (by the way, older versions can also work on SPARC). You can even configure it to boot using PXE if needed. If you have a network of many computers, you can avoid using a Live CD/flash drive at all, but boot all computers using PXE. If you need to carry out recovery work on the system or simply copy data from a damaged system, then SystemRescueCD is your option!

SystemRescueCD is equipped with a full set of necessary utilities, including partition managers and network tools. Be sure to take a look at this distribution and always have a fresh copy of it on hand, just in case.

Network Security Toolkit

Last on the list, but certainly no less useful, is a distribution based on Fedora - Network Security Toolkit (NST). If you've ever looked at Insecure.Org's Top 100 Security Utilities, you might wish you had it all on one drive. Network Security Toolkit is just that. Of course, not all 100 are present in it, but those that are present are very close in functionality. You will get Wireshark, Nmap, Snort, Nessus and a bunch of other useful things, like geolocation.

NST has an easy-to-use Web interface and is a must-have for every network or system administrator, as well as people interested in network technologies. Just like SystemRescueCD, I rarely use NST, but I still prefer to always have it on hand. By the way, it is available not only as a Live CD image, but also as a virtual machine, if you suddenly want to use it in VMWare Player or Workstation.

Results

Even if you're not a fan of using Live CDs, I still recommend you have at least one of these on hand. I especially recommend getting a copy of Knoppix or SystemRescueCD in case of emergencies. If your hard drive dies or system updates go wrong, the ability to boot will be of great importance.