Linux® Bible, 2008 Edition: Boot Up to Ubuntu®, Fedora®, KNOPPIX, Debian®, openSUSE®, and 11 Other Distributions

Chapter 19. Running Bootable Linux Distributions

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Exploring bootable Linuxes

• Choosing bootable Linux distributions

• Booting rescue distributions

• Booting multimedia distributions

• Booting tiny desktop distributions

• Customizing a bootable Linux

While KNOPPIX is probably the best-known bootable Linux distribution, it's by no means the only one. In the past few years, bootable Linux systems have gone from little more than simple, shell-command rescue floppies to full-blown desktop, server, and security operating systems.

Tools for creating bootable Linux systems have improved quite a lot recently. Because open source software can be pieced together and redistributed, individuals are beginning to create custom bootables that include their own music, presentations, or movies, along with a personal toolkit of software.

This chapter describes some popular and interesting bootable Linux distributions. It also explores ways that you can customize some of these bootable Linux systems to suit your needs.

Note

If you haven't already done so, I recommend you try the KNOPPIX distribution included with this book and described in Chapter 11. It will help you get a good hands-on view of a bootable Linux system by describing how KNOPPIX works, how to use different boot options to start it, and ways of saving changes across reboots. You can also check out Appendix B for a list of other bootable Linux distributions that come on the CD and DVD included with this book.

Overview of Bootable Linux Distributions ...