Many Linux distributions have boot CDs available. You put the CD in the drive, restart the computer, it boots from the CD instead of the hard drive, and you can use it to rescue or tinker with an infected system, without having to install it on the computer.
When I used to use MSWindows I had the bad experience of getting my machine infected once by a program that used Windows itself to protect it from deletion. The only way I could delete the damn thing was to reboot on a bootable floppy disk. These days it would be much easier, because I could boot the Windows machine on a Puppy CD, get rid of the infection, take the Puppy CD out, and reboot the machine as normal in Windows, minus the infection.
These days I use Linux so am quite a bit safer (until Linux becomes popular enough for the predators to want to feed on us). The particular Linux variant I use most of the time is Puppy Linux (http://www.puppylinux.com). While many Linuxes have bootable CDs available, Puppy is always distributed as a bootable CD. You can install this on your computer's hard drive (as I have on most of my machines) or you can simply use it from CD (as I do with the computer I use to connect to the net -- nothing can tamper with the operating system if it is sitting on CD).
This boot-CD quality of Puppy is one of the reasons I like it, but the main two reasons I prefer it are that it is tiny compared to most modern operating systems (less than 100MB), runs much faster than most modern operating systems (mainly because it isn't as bloated as others), and is very easy to use (it superficially resembles Windows98).
The size and speed issues are very important to me because I don't upgrade my machines the way other people do. Many of my machines are quite old, slow, and have little memory. Puppy makes them usable, where other operating systems would make them laughable. However Puppy's speed and size are still assets even on fast machines with oodles of RAM and giant hard drives; it lets them move like greased lightning and gives you far more room for other things.
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branchandroot
Re: fake scanner
Date: 2009-08-11 11:08 am (UTC)When I used to use MSWindows I had the bad experience of getting my machine infected once by a program that used Windows itself to protect it from deletion. The only way I could delete the damn thing was to reboot on a bootable floppy disk. These days it would be much easier, because I could boot the Windows machine on a Puppy CD, get rid of the infection, take the Puppy CD out, and reboot the machine as normal in Windows, minus the infection.
These days I use Linux so am quite a bit safer (until Linux becomes popular enough for the predators to want to feed on us). The particular Linux variant I use most of the time is Puppy Linux (http://www.puppylinux.com). While many Linuxes have bootable CDs available, Puppy is always distributed as a bootable CD. You can install this on your computer's hard drive (as I have on most of my machines) or you can simply use it from CD (as I do with the computer I use to connect to the net -- nothing can tamper with the operating system if it is sitting on CD).
This boot-CD quality of Puppy is one of the reasons I like it, but the main two reasons I prefer it are that it is tiny compared to most modern operating systems (less than 100MB), runs much faster than most modern operating systems (mainly because it isn't as bloated as others), and is very easy to use (it superficially resembles Windows98).
The size and speed issues are very important to me because I don't upgrade my machines the way other people do. Many of my machines are quite old, slow, and have little memory. Puppy makes them usable, where other operating systems would make them laughable. However Puppy's speed and size are still assets even on fast machines with oodles of RAM and giant hard drives; it lets them move like greased lightning and gives you far more room for other things.