TL;DR

I looked into a few Linux live distributions.

About 20+ years ago I became interested into Linux live distributions, i.e. distributions distributed as CD/DVD images that I could burn onto a medium (even a CD-RW) and boot from, to get a Linux system without the need to fiddle with the hard disk.

The idea intrigued me a lot, because it opened ways to “look in a system” without touching it (forensic-like), as well as being able to try out things without the need to install anything.

Then CD writers/readers went out of fashion, I don’t know why exactly, and this was lost. Sure, it’s possible to boot from a USB key. Sure, there are memories that can be set (mechanically) in read mode. Yet the simple fact that you can’t burn a closed CD, or even burn it at all with a CD-ROM reader, is still a convincing reason security-wise.

Whatever.

Anyway.

I took a second look lately, and my first impressions are mixed. I remember having had a good experience with Puppy Linux at the time. Now apparently it’s become a family of distributions, and I might have chosen not-wisely because I could boot it, play a little but could not save it into a disk (in VirtualBox, anyway).

Then I moved on to Slax and that was fun. There are clear instructions about what to do for customization and there’s also a decent amount of fun in using it.

A a minor nitpick… it didn’t save my .bashrc.

So there I was, with some nostaliga and yet too little time to look further on. So… Slax will be the one, for now!