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Looks awesome. But who really uses a CD for live distros in this day and age? A flash drive would be more apt example. This made me think about how traditionali

Looks awesome. But who really uses a CD for live distros in this day and age? A flash drive would be more apt example. This made me think about how traditionalist large parts of the linux community is. :)

nxzero 10y ago
One reason is that it's surprisingly hard to find a cheap flash drives that use hardware enforced read-only access.
- teach 10y ago
  Is this desirable? Why would one care if your live CD is able to write to the flash if it were to try?
  - mjevans 10y ago
    Yes, it is, if you want to trust that using your bootable media in a hostile system will not infect it with some firmware level nastyness. Yeah... BIOSes are attack vectors too.
  - nxzero 10y ago
    Security reasons. If you boot in a hostile environment you don't have to worry about anything attacking you, hiding in free space, etc. Of course, this assumes the firmware is secured too; aka Bad USB. An OS read from a CD player that's read-only won't have this issue; that said, even if the CD is burned and all the free space too, it's likely you could introduce an exploit onto the CD by editing the encoding already on the CD by putting it in a CD player that's able to read & write to it and override the read-only flag on the CD.
kylegordon 10y ago
In normal Debian fashion, it's a hybrid image that can be dd'ed to either CD or USB.
dragonbonheur 10y ago
There are tools like Linux Live USB creator to put ISOs on USB flash drives. http://www.linuxliveusb.com/ http://www.linuxliveusb.com/
Lagged2Death 10y ago
I'm a Linux noob, I've played around with some live CDs. The other day I tried to set up a flash drive to work the same way as a live CD. I did get it working eventually, but it was a surprisingly bad experience. Some of the flash drives I created didn't work at all, one of them booted a couple times, then stopped working, the boot process would vary from one boot to the next, etc. In my experience, live CDs "just work" in comparison.
- stryk 10y ago
  It's really super easy. If you're creating the bootable USB stick on a Windows machine, use RUFUS ( https://rufus.akeo.ie/ https://rufus.akeo.ie/ ). It's about as straight-forward and noob-friendly as it gets. A single window, options in plain English. If you're creating the bootable USB stick from a Linux machine, use Etcher ( https://www.etcher.io/ https://www.etcher.io/ ). Also very user friendly and simple. It's even distributed as a downloadable .AppImage file, so it's a double-click install on most distros. On Mac OSX - sorry, no idea, haven't used one since Apple IIe's in middle school, but I'm sure there is something similar out there for OSX (and if nothing else, you could probably get dd working in a terminal if you had to) EDIT: Forgot to mention that RUFUS on Windows will automatically detect which versions of syslinux (the low-level booty-BIOS-y stuff) the .ISO that you select uses, and sets itself up accordingly. It can even use a newer version of syslinux if the one supplied in the .ISO is outdated. Really solid software.
  - j_s 10y ago
    RUFUS is fast but Yumi is best if you want a swiss-army-knife style bootable USB stick with multiple images to choose from, including Windows install DVD images. It also supports setup on an existing USB stick you don't want to completely wipe. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/ http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/ http://AlternativeTo.net http://AlternativeTo.net pulled up UNetBootin as a cross-platform alternative. http://unetbootin.github.io/ http://unetbootin.github.io/
    - voltagex_ 10y ago
khedoros 10y ago
Me, every time I do an install. I've got a ton of DVDs left around. I've had USB devices designated as OS install devices, but those always end up repurposed or given away in the months/years between OS installs...but I don't have much other use for the DVDs anymore, so they're always available.
keithpeter 10y ago
I keep copy of clonezilla on a CD along with my Slackware DVD and an old Ubuntu live DVD. Just in case as emergency tools. For messing around with random distros I just use a USB stick.
- lgp171188 10y ago
  I use DriveDroid (http://softwarebakery.com/projects/drivedroid http://softwarebakery.com/projects/drivedroid) on my rooted OnePlus One running CM 13. Very easy and convenient.

nxzero 10y ago

One reason is that it's surprisingly hard to find a cheap flash drives that use hardware enforced read-only access.

teach 10y ago
Is this desirable? Why would one care if your live CD is able to write to the flash if it were to try?
- mjevans 10y ago
  Yes, it is, if you want to trust that using your bootable media in a hostile system will not infect it with some firmware level nastyness. Yeah... BIOSes are attack vectors too.
- nxzero 10y ago
  Security reasons. If you boot in a hostile environment you don't have to worry about anything attacking you, hiding in free space, etc. Of course, this assumes the firmware is secured too; aka Bad USB. An OS read from a CD player that's read-only won't have this issue; that said, even if the CD is burned and all the free space too, it's likely you could introduce an exploit onto the CD by editing the encoding already on the CD by putting it in a CD player that's able to read & write to it and override the read-only flag on the CD.

kylegordon 10y ago

In normal Debian fashion, it's a hybrid image that can be dd'ed to either CD or USB.

dragonbonheur 10y ago

There are tools like Linux Live USB creator to put ISOs on USB flash drives. http://www.linuxliveusb.com/ http://www.linuxliveusb.com/

Lagged2Death 10y ago

I'm a Linux noob, I've played around with some live CDs. The other day I tried to set up a flash drive to work the same way as a live CD. I did get it working eventually, but it was a surprisingly bad experience. Some of the flash drives I created didn't work at all, one of them booted a couple times, then stopped working, the boot process would vary from one boot to the next, etc. In my experience, live CDs "just work" in comparison.

stryk 10y ago
It's really super easy. If you're creating the bootable USB stick on a Windows machine, use RUFUS ( https://rufus.akeo.ie/ https://rufus.akeo.ie/ ). It's about as straight-forward and noob-friendly as it gets. A single window, options in plain English. If you're creating the bootable USB stick from a Linux machine, use Etcher ( https://www.etcher.io/ https://www.etcher.io/ ). Also very user friendly and simple. It's even distributed as a downloadable .AppImage file, so it's a double-click install on most distros. On Mac OSX - sorry, no idea, haven't used one since Apple IIe's in middle school, but I'm sure there is something similar out there for OSX (and if nothing else, you could probably get dd working in a terminal if you had to) EDIT: Forgot to mention that RUFUS on Windows will automatically detect which versions of syslinux (the low-level booty-BIOS-y stuff) the .ISO that you select uses, and sets itself up accordingly. It can even use a newer version of syslinux if the one supplied in the .ISO is outdated. Really solid software.
- j_s 10y ago
  RUFUS is fast but Yumi is best if you want a swiss-army-knife style bootable USB stick with multiple images to choose from, including Windows install DVD images. It also supports setup on an existing USB stick you don't want to completely wipe. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/ http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/ http://AlternativeTo.net http://AlternativeTo.net pulled up UNetBootin as a cross-platform alternative. http://unetbootin.github.io/ http://unetbootin.github.io/
  - voltagex_ 10y ago

khedoros 10y ago

Me, every time I do an install. I've got a ton of DVDs left around. I've had USB devices designated as OS install devices, but those always end up repurposed or given away in the months/years between OS installs...but I don't have much other use for the DVDs anymore, so they're always available.

keithpeter 10y ago

I keep copy of clonezilla on a CD along with my Slackware DVD and an old Ubuntu live DVD. Just in case as emergency tools. For messing around with random distros I just use a USB stick.

lgp171188 10y ago
I use DriveDroid (http://softwarebakery.com/projects/drivedroid http://softwarebakery.com/projects/drivedroid) on my rooted OnePlus One running CM 13. Very easy and convenient.