In the second tier, all about as fast as each other, are,
* SAM (www.sam-linux.org). This plucky German distro has character. It's an Xfce/Mandrake combo, which means it's pretty, and comes with great noob-friendly configuration tools. It has another twist: it includes Textmaker and Planmaker, free versions of commercial office programs. It's snappy and it makes you happy. Printing was missing, though.
* Morphix (www.morphix.org) has a new Light GUI version that impressed me. It loads fast, from boot to application. To get it to use wireless, I had to type these commands from a terminal window:
sudo iwconfig eth0 essid linksys sudo iwconfig eth0 key [1] xxxxxx sudo dhclient eth0
It worked, but I don't know which is worse: that I finally learned all that, or that I needed to. Moreover, printing involved starting up cups, and configuring it all blind. That's just harder than it needs to be. But Morphix has promise, too, a modular Linux that just needs an "Ubuntu Starter Guide" clone to be a hard drive install that would wring another year or two out of an "end of life" machine.
* BeatrIX (www.watsky.net), as noted above, is Ubuntu, minus 25 pounds, and in training. Gnome, Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Evolution, GAIM. The breakfast of champions.
* SLAX (slax.linux-live.org) surprised me. It wasn't the fastest. It wasn't the most modern. KDE-based, it nonetheless looked great to me. It took a second or two to load things, but then ran tight and clean. I begin to see the Slackware appeal. SLAX feels like a distro that stays close to its origins. I couldn't get it to talk to the wireless network, and couldn't get it to print -- just a little too stripped down for this non-programmer (but because of that, it also fits on a mini-CD). It's not an install disk, either. But I liked it anyhow.
3rd tier:
* Ubuntu (www.ubuntulinux.org), with 256 megs of memory, has become my work machine distro of choice. But it runs at 128 megs, too, if a little sluggishly. Again, it feels complete and polished.
* Mandrake Move, on my 128 meg machine, was slow to get started. But after that, like SLAX or PCLinuxOS, it felt thoughtfully woven together, a complete environment.
* Knoppix/Kanotix/Mepis. All good choices, but Mepis feels more home user oriented.
* Xfld (ww.xfld.org/Xfld/en/index.html). This one is worth a look. Knoppix hardware detection; Xfce window manager. This is another one I could live in.
PCLOS and SUSE don't run on 128 meg machines.
For the best "experience" on an older or underpowered machine:
Ubuntu and MandrakeMove are, I think, roughly equal on a slower machine.
But what's the one live CD to carry around with you, not only to wow your friends, but to do actual work quickly and efficiently: BeatrIX.
_Oddballs_
A couple of quick comments on the distros I don't recommend.
Basilisk, based on Fedora, was so excruciatingly slow in getting to a GDM login screen, and even slower beyond that, that I can only hope I had a corrupted download. Unusable.
Berry Linux, also based on Fedora, wins the prize for the most entertaining CD start-up routine. First you get a marijuana leaf, then a jackhammer, then a heart, then ... A KDE distro, it too looks good. But it also felt sketchy, and if it had any package management tools installed, I couldn't find them.
FreeSBIE, based on Free BSD and bundled with Xfce, is intriguing, but I couldn't get it to talk to the wireless network, or to print. It also crashed my system twice. But I'd be willing to check it out again sometime.
Kanotix and Knoppix. Nothing wrong with them at all, and both have rich communities. Just not to my taste. But they do run on lower-capacity machines.
SUSE. I've had trouble on every computer I've ever tried it on. Sometimes it locks, sometimes it hangs looking for a printer. Who needs it, with so many other choices?
_Conclusion_
Finally, I'd like to thank all of the Live CD producers for their work, their obvious passion for their products, and for the low-risk opportunity to test their vision, before committing it to the hard drive. I spent a happy couple of weeks with their work, and I'm grateful to them.
About the author:
James LaRue is a public library administrator..
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
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