Using a Live CD as Your Operating System

The hard drive or what is commonly known as the "hard disk," plays a vital role in a computer system. It is an internal secondary storage where data is permanently stored including the operating system (OS). To run an OS, we should install it first on a hard disk, but what if you want to view two different OS in one computer? Do you need to install both operating systems on your computer? The answer is both yes and no, "yes" if you are using an ordinary CD or installer and "no" if you are using a Live CD.

A live CD is a bootable CD that contains pre-configured software and is able to run on a computer without the hassle of a full installation process. The term "live" is used to describe the package that is completely runable. To run a Live CD, you must have a CD-ROM drive, at least 256 MB memory and you BIOS must be configured to boot from your CD-ROM first.

A live CD does not alter the existing operating system or files on your hard drive unless you request it; the fact is that it does not need a hard drive at all. Data from the Live CD is stored directly in RAM or in the memory of the computer and cycle time can be reduced because the processor can immediately fetch the data to run. However, it also reduces the capacity of memory to use for application; that is why the recommended memory capacity is at least 256 MB.

When you're working on a computer, you'll always create data and files that you'll want to store. If you are using a Live CD, you have several options. You could use USB flash disk, which is available from 128 MB and higher. You could also simply store the files remotely via the Internet (maybe connecting to the remote server via a secure virtual private network (VPN). You could also use the technique of saving your files to your Gmail folder, send it to your e-mail or upload it on free a web hosting like Geocities.

Using a Live CD is the simplest way to preview or demo an operating system. Most available Live CDs are based on the Linux platform, but there are some versions that are based on Mac OS, FreeBSD, BeOS, MS-DOS and even Microsoft Windows. Nowadays, an operating system is not only stored on a CD, but it can also be a bootable DVD (Live DVD) and USB flash disk (Live USB).