How difficult is it to connect to the net using a Linux LiveCD?
A friend whose hard drive crashed uses his PC only for net basics like email, reading news, etc. So I’m wondering if an Ubuntu or Mint LiveCD would be his best solution. If he needs to save something, could use a USB thumb drive?
I’m hesitant to suggest this to him because my most grating computer-related problems have always been setting up and troubleshooting internet connections. [Aside from a few years ago when my PC became infected with Norton Antivirus.]
Will using a LiveCD be easy, or does it depend on his type of net connection?
It depends mostly on driver support for his particular PC/laptop. If it’s semi-modern it’d probably work. If it’s older it may or may not work. Give it a shot… nothing to lose.
Ubuntu is usually great about driver support, so try it both with the wireless and the wired ethernet connection. Chances are one of them will work.
As for saving, yeah, he could copy things a USB drive… that wouldn’t be a very nice long-term solution, but should at least tide him over until he can get a new hard drive.
If he’s going to replace the computer anyway, have him look into a Chromebook – it’s basically a stripped-down, barebones Linux designed to be used only for the Internet, without all the headaches like Norton and such.
Honestly, the easiest way to find out is probably just try it. It’ll probably take less time and effort to burn a CD and throw it in the laptop than to go through internet forums trying to suss out what particular drivers you need and if they’re included in the default install.
I’d say your chances of it “just working” are pretty good. I put Linux on all my computers and laptops and those of the various relatives I provide family tech support for, and its been a long time since I’ve had what used to be the common problem of wireless driver hell.
Obviously running off a CD is going to be pretty slow, but if he’s really just browsing the web and doesn’t mind really long boot up times it might be OK.
as long as the live distro has a driver for the PC’s network hardware, it should be easy as cake. If it’s wired ethernet, then it should be automatic. WiFi will need a little more setup.
worth a try.
depends on the specific hardware, but if this PC is wired directly to a cable modem/router it should Just Work.
Yep, it just depends on what hardware he has. Give it a try, I’d try Puppy and Mint. My olde laptop runs Puppy Linux well, but it doesn’t seem to support Sleep/Standby. I do seem to remember I had some trouble getting WiFi recognized, but did get it working.
USB drive speeds vary a LOT, but I’d say you can generally expect them to be faster, if only because they don’t have as long “seek” times (meaning the program doesn’t have to wait for the disc to spin back into the right position).
A 48x CD drive reads at about 8 MB/sec. USB drives go from 5 MB/sec at the very slow end to more than 50 MB/sec at the faster end. A good USB 2 drive will be faster than the fastest DVD. A good USB 3 drive will absolutely run circles around it – no pun intended. But regardless of the on paper speed, in reality both will feel a lot slower than a regular hard drive install.
Reply covered the important stuff, but there are a couple other points to consider:
a cheap USB thumb drive might be slower in raw transfer rate than a fast CD drive, but even the shittiest thumb drive will have way less latency. I’ve booted live Linux distros many times, and there’s always a lot of chattering from the CD/DVD drive pickup moving back and forth over the disc’s surface. Flash drives have nearly no latency penalty since they have no moving parts.
on the other hand, since we don’t know what kind or how old of a PC your friend has, we can’t be sure it can even boot from a USB drive. USB booting is a fairly recent feature.
past that, if you asked me to recommend a distro, I’d say (in descending order) Ubuntu, Mint, and Elementary OS. Ubuntu primarily because it’s the one which has received the most funding and development for consumer use. I don’t know what Mark Shuttleworth’s end game is for Ubuntu, but he really seems to want to make it succeed. Mint is Ubuntu-based but with a simpler (but compatible) GUI. Elementary is also Ubuntu-based, but they took GNOME 3 and made it pleasant to use, though it’s too derivative of Mac OS X. I happen to by typing this post on my laptop running the latest beta of Elementary.