Use a Live CD to load your operating system

Q In answer to the question from Alan Middlemass about not using his computer's main hard disk to store documents, you recommended using a USB hard disk or memory key along with portable applications. Would it be easier to do the same thing using a Live CD?

James Keane

A You are right, it is possible to do something similar using a Live CD. To recap, Mr Middlemass wanted to avoid problems when transferring from one computer to another by not storing anything on any computer.

Instead he wanted to store all his programs and documents on another device that he could then plug into any computer and get on with his work.

A Live CD is an operating system on a CD. Instead of installing the operating system from the CD onto your computer's hard disk (as normally happens with Windows) you can run the whole thing from the CD without installing anything. In fact, doing it this way you don't even need a hard disk in the computer.

Normally Live CDs use the Linux operating system rather than Windows. While this may mean having to learn a new way of doing things, the advantage is that most of the applications required will already be on the CD.

For instance, if most of what you do is web, email or office tasks, many Live CDs come with Firefox, Thunderbird and Openoffice installed, allowing you to do all those things.

You will need to download the live CD as a disc (or ISO) image and then create it, which is normally simple if you have CD burning software on your computer (you will need a blank CD, obviously).

Then restart the computer with the finished disc in the drive and instead of Windows it will load the operating system on the Live CD. You will be able to read any documents created in Windows and you can save the documents you create to the USB storage device.

If you have access to a working internet connection online office suites such as docs.google.com or zoho.com will store your documents online.

You can find a list of available live CDs at livecdlist.com. They are usually free to download. From the list we'd recommend giving PCLinuxOS a try. Visit the site and click the Get PCLinuxOS button.

You can also buy a CD if you don't fancy downloading it – it costs around $8 (£5) including shipping. We also recommend the Ubuntu version of Linux, which is slightly more expensive at £17 for a CD or free to download.

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