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I dropped my laptop and shattered the harddrive. Before buying a new drive, I'd like to use a bootable CD/DVD to use the thing.

The requirements are very simple:

  1. Modern web browser
  2. Flash Player (recent version)
  3. Ability to play video (VLC player?)
  4. Audio/network support
  5. Windows remote desktop support

That's all. Any suggestions?

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I would suggest getting the Linux Mint Live CD. It is based on Ubuntu but comes with more things to make the windows to linux transition easier. This is good in your case because you are going to rely on the Live CD. The more stuff is on it, the less you have to install into the temporary Ram drive it uses on every boot.

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  • Ugh. So chugging it's painful, but the distro is good for my purposes. Thanks.
    – spender
    Nov 22, 2009 at 22:03
  • Yea, it's slow because it's running off the CD/DVD which is slow by nature. You could also try Knoppix as I believe that one loads itself completely into RAM and doesn't use the CD at all after booting.
    – Marcin
    Nov 23, 2009 at 0:45
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Use a Linux distro you like. What will run well will depend on your laptop's specs. If you're unfamiliar with Linux and have no idea what you might like, try Ubuntu, but be ready to use others because they vary widely.

If you run from a Live CD or DVD you can use a USB thumbdrive (or similar, such as SD card, etc.) then you'll have a place to save your documents; however, if you "install" the Live Disc to the thumbdrive, you can use extra room to save the state of your system.

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