While open source operating systems can be used for free, some commercial software, such as Windows To Go requires a license to use. Many Linux distributions make ISO images available for burning to CD or DVD. Many live CDs offer the option of persistence by writing files to a hard drive or USB flash drive. The functionality of a live CD is also available with an external hard disk drive connected by USB. Live CDs can run on a computer without secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive, or with a corrupted hard disk drive or file system, allowing data recovery.Īs CD and DVD drives have been steadily phased-out, live CDs have become less popular, being replaced by live USBs, which are equivalent systems written onto USB flash drives, which have the added benefit of having writeable storage. A live CD allows users to run an operating system for any purpose without installing it or making any changes to the computer's configuration. Ubuntu 16.04 system running from a live DVD image, with the Unity desktop environmentĪ live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than loading from a hard disk drive.

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