So you have decided to see what is Linux for yourself and now you are afraid that you might mess up your entire system if you go wrong. Fear not my friends, a LIVE distribution CD is all you need.
A LIVE distribution is a specially designed Linux distribution which boots from the CD itself. You don’t need to install it, make free space or any of the other hassles which come with installing an operating system. All you need is the image of the distribution burned on a CD. There are a number of uses of a LIVE distribution. Trying out a new system, trying out an unstable release of a distribution. Or just on systems which lack secondary storage devices such as Harddisk.
We will consider Ubuntu for the purpose of this tutorial. Obtain Ubuntu image from the official website. If you are low on your bandwidth you can also order a free CD. If you download the image, download the LIVE image and not the alternate one. Burn it to a blank CD and you are all set.
Ubuntu Boot Splash
Now restart your machine and from the BIOS setup, set the first boot device to optical media. If you have a relatively new system, chances are that the first boot device is set to optical media by default. You will soon be greeted with Ubuntu boot screen similar to one shown in the picture. Select ‘Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer‘. Sit back and enjoy. Once you are done with it, just shut down the system, remove the CD and your system is left without any modifications whatsoever. In case you want to try some other distribution, a comprehensive list of LIVE distributions can be found here.
You can do a lot with LIVE distributions. One of them is to make your own LIVE distribution with only those applications which you want which will be the focus of our next article. Until then, enjoy Linuxing.
[...] learned about LIVE CDs in our last post here on noob2geek. When you really think about it, very few people use CDs these days with the [...]