How to Linux Live CD Boot

Posted on February 17, 2011

This is a brief tutorial on how to boot a computer using the Fedora Linux distro Live CD.

Getting The Linux Live Desktop.

Go to fedoraproject.org and download the latest live desktop version iso image. Currently it’s Fedora 14.
Burn the iso to a disk or use Fedroa’s LiveUSB Creator to make a bootable USB drive.

Booting with the CD or DVD. This is a slower option but works well.

Insert the disk and boot the computer. You can tap the esc, F12 or the key required to go to the boot menu.
select the drive that the CD or DVD is in the hit enter. This is slow process and may take many minutes.
You will see text across the top of the screen telling you the Linux is booting up.

Booting with a USB drive

Insert the USB drive and boot the computer. You can tap the esc, F12 or the key required to go to the boot menu.
You will see text across the top of the screen telling you the Linux is booting up. At this point on some computer will hang. If this happens you will need to use the CD or DVD. Typically if the splash screen does not come up in a couple of minutes hit Ctrl+Alt+Del to reboot and use the CD method.

Once Linux is up, you now can access the hard drive and do what you need to do. Here are a few of the things that I find most helpful.

Running rsync to make backups of folders and files.
Restore folders and files using rsync
Run dd to make iso images of the hard drive.
Restoring complete drives with the iso image
edit windows system files.
Hunt down virus, worms, malware and any other thing that plagues the Windows operating system.
Check hardware, Linux has a great hard drive tool that will tell you if your drive is failing. I was surprised at the number of failing disk that I come across.

The possibilities are endless and it’s always nice to have a way to put Windows under anesthetics while I preform some type of surgery.