Two Linux distributions live media that pendrive should install
I got one 2G pendrive. If I don’t store something useful, then it will be a waste. There are several LiveCDs (live media) available, but most of the major distributions using this live media for preview purpose only, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Linux Mint, etc. Therefore, I am looking for some distributions that targeting on live media. There are several popular live media, such as DamnSmallLinux, Puppy Linux, Slax, Knoppix, and so on.
DamnSmallLinux is out of my choice, because it is damn small. Puppy Linux also. Slax is too old. So, the only left is Knoppix. Yes, it is so wonderful, targeting on live media. There are several reasons I choose it. Firstly, it will generate an image that stores the users setting, so that next time I boot, the setting is still the same. I have tried to install Chromium and other stuff, almost 400MB image needs to be created to store the updated repositories and the installed packages. (We can increase size through several commands outside if we want.) Secondly, it has LibreOffice by default. This is important, because most of my documents are OpenDocuments. Besides that, there are GIMP and mplayer. Most of the important working tools are installed by default. The only thing I don’t like is the Iceweasel, that is why I installed Chromium manually.
Now, after installing 2G pendrive with Knoppix, there are still some space left. So, the other part, I installed SystemRescueCD. Fortunately, Knoppix and SystemRescueCD file system structures are different. Knoppix stores all the data in KNOPPIX folder and SystemRescueCD stores everything in a single image file sysrcd.dat. The only thing they are same is the syslinux (since they are installed for LiveUSB).
So, when I want to boot into Knoppix, I just rename the corresponding syslinux folder to “syslinux”, if I want to boot into SystemRescueCD, then I just rename the other syslinux folder to “syslinux” as well.
As a result, my pendrive is able to do some rescuing task using SystemRescueCD, or do office works using Knoppix.