Is installing from Live! CD a good idea?

KirkD · #1 16th October 2007, 08:15 PM

At this point I have a working Live CD for Fedora 7 (KDE) and KUbuntu. Both work A-OK and I'm just trying to figure out the differences. They are different, right? Seems mostly the same to me with a little eye-candy differences here and there.

Anywho, my plan is to settle on one I like then istall from the Live CD for that distro. I can then add the various packages I specifically want - various games, programming utilities, OpenOffice, etc.

Somewhere (I don't remember where), someone was bemoaning that this is not a good idea. But, it seems like a fine idea to me.

Any opinions? (Rhetorical, I know, none the less...)

-Kirk

FriedChips · #2 16th October 2007, 08:23 PM

Nothing wrong with installing from a liveCD in my experience. The main differences between Fedora and *buntu is the package manager, and the administrative tools. *buntu will use apt-get while Fedora uses yum.

***bob*** · #3 17th October 2007, 12:55 AM

It's certainly a good idea. Most of the packages on the DVD have long since been updated so you would be faced with a very long time getting the system updated through yum. Might as well install the latest versions of any package you want to add.

johannlo · #4 17th October 2007, 01:56 AM

So there is no difference (once installed) between live-cd and full? i.e. I can still view, add and remove packages via yum. Because I read somewhere (not this forum! haha) that a live-cd install comes out different to a full install, and that adding / removing components is different... mind you in vmware I have not noticed any differences

RahulSundaram · #5 17th October 2007, 11:59 AM

Hi,

There is no such differences. The actual differences are listed in http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora7/FAQ. They behave just the same post installation.

johannlo · #6 18th October 2007, 12:06 AM

Hey thanks Rahul. Keep up the good work!

KirkD · #7 18th October 2007, 12:26 AM

Thanks to everyone who responded. I anticipate that I will go with the Live version followed by installing my specific packages of interest.

I also notice the Fedora 8 will have multiple Live CD spins. Specifically, on geared toward developers which will include various Java, C++, Python, and code management packages. That's perfect! If anyone knows of the existence of such a spin for Fedora 7, I'm all ears!

-Kirk

johannlo · #8 18th October 2007, 02:56 AM

What we really need (and yes I understand for legal reasons it ain't ever happening officially) is a 'proprietary desktop' spin with MS truetype, sun java, flash, mp3, xvid / h264 / divx / wma etc. etc. all working out of the box. After fixing up FC4,5 and 6 I know how to get the above working but its still a pain

And if Red Hat released some KDE based system admin tools would be nice!

KirkD · #9 18th October 2007, 03:01 AM

You could always put together your own spin and post it. 8^)

johannlo · #10 18th October 2007, 03:38 AM

That's true, but some of the components are not packaged in the repos. Also CLI tweaks required (e.g. to set up java). Then theres setting defaults (god I hate totem) etc.....

Then there's hdparm, re-nicing X, and all the million and one tweaks I find absolutely indispensible to get it up to XP speeds (for desktop usage, I'm not trying to start any flamewars).

KirkD · #11 18th October 2007, 03:49 AM

Sounds easy. 8^)

So I have another question for you - I'm tyring desperately to get an installation in a Dell Inspiron 1720 with zero luck. Fedora Live, Fedora KDE Live, Ubuntu Live all fail with errors:

Kubuntu Live:
This one falls out during the initial boot saying it cannot find "tty" It then fails completely.

Fedora KDE Live:
I get through "uncompressing LINUX...OK, booting the kernel."

It then sits for a while and eventually I get:

"Cannot find root file system

Create symlink /dev/root and then exit this shell to continue the boot sequence.

bash: no job control in this shell"

Fedora GNOME Live:
Same as above.

Fedora full distro DVD:
The installer comes up and goes into a text mode install - looks like an old DOS installer. I'm asked to specify a language and a keyboard layout. Then I get to a screen that asks where my installation resides. My options are a CD-ROM, HDD, FTP, USB. The installer started from a DVD so shouldn't it assume the media exists there? Regardless, the model of the DVD is a TSST TS-L6324 ATA. I looked through the possible drivers for a CD (yes, this is a DVD, but I'm not given that as an option) and there is nothing I can find that even remotely matches.

I also have a 6 year old Dell Dimension 8200 desktop on which all the Live CDs work fine. The DVD installation has bigger issues which I think are due to the DVD player having issues of its own. But all 3 live CDs work fine.

Any ideas???

I'm going to try Debian KDE Live next, but I'm doubtful.

-Kirk

gadgetwiz · #12 18th October 2007, 05:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johannlo

What we really need (and yes I understand for legal reasons it ain't ever happening officially) is a 'proprietary desktop' spin with MS truetype, sun java, flash, mp3, xvid / h264 / divx / wma etc. etc. all working out of the box. After fixing up FC4,5 and 6 I know how to get the above working but its still a pain

I think a good idea would be to provide and maintain a small install script (or link to such script) that would accomplish this. A single post install click would get all the goodies.

johannlo · #13 18th October 2007, 06:15 AM

Yeah but the script will need some serious smarts or else it could potentially damage the installation if it runs into a config outside of what its expecting.

Observe automatix for ubuntu, some swear by it, others reckon it breaks your system six ways to sunday.

KirKD, off topic but I'll bite, what is your motherboard specifically what is the controller that runs your DVD? Have you tried changing motherboard slots (e.g. SATA 1 to SATA 2), etc, BIOS settings (esp. if you have a SATA-to-IDE bridge, you can turn on legacy IDE mode etc.).

Also does Knoppix (or any other live distro) work? If so get an lspci output and start googling against your controller, probably a hardware issue that requires specific kernel parameters or a BIOS setting change etc.

KirkD · #14 18th October 2007, 06:37 AM

The specs on the system are:
Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, 2.2 GHz, 800 MHz, 4MB L2 Cache
2GB DDR2, 667 MHz RAM
Dual Hard Drives 2X160 (Originally hoping to dual boot Win and LINUX)
8X DVD +/- RW Dual layer Drive (The drive model is TSST TS-L6324 ATA - that's all I find about it specifically)

I haven't tried Knoppix and I was just looking at Mandriva from a Google search.

As for legacy IDE mode, I don't think that is an option. I'm honestly stuck and don't know which direction to go.

KirkD · #15 18th October 2007, 07:56 AM

Holy cow Mandriva works! I pulled down the Mandriva 2008 Live iso, burned a CD, and BAM! It fires up.

So is there any way I can exploit the fact that Mandriva worked to get Fedora to work? It has to be the selected set of drivers - is there a way I can compare details between the two distros??

-kirk