[PLUG] What is a "live distro"?

Fred James fredjame at fredjame.cnc.net
Wed Dec 28 01:42:07 UTC 2011


Richard Owlett wrote:
> Is it correct to say a "live instance" is:
>      a. an emulation?
>      b. a virtual machine/other?
>
>   
I don't like to miss the opportunity to muddy the waters, so here goes ...
    (1) "live distro" ... live in this case (as in Linux) usually means 
a complete and self-booting Linux OS and applications, all on one CD (or 
DVD, or USB memory stick, for that matter)
               Just boot and run as is without installing, although many 
of these do offer an install option.
    (2) "live instance" ... an instance may be an instantiation, or copy 
of (fill in the blank), and a live instance is one of those that is 
currently live(???)
    (3) "emulation" ... in the computer world, emulation is usually a 
software layer that pretends to be something else ... example: a layer 
over the underlaying OS that pretends to be a different OS
    (4) "virtual machine" ... VMWare is a good example here ... say your 
OS is Linux ABC (the host OS), then you install VMWare to run on top of 
that.  Then in VMWare you install one or more "guest" OS's ... these 
guest OS's are virtual machines in that none of them talk to the base 
machine, and any or all of them can crash without disturbing the base 
machine or "host" OS
    (5) "other" ... oh, now that is a long list
... is any of that any help at all?
Regards
Fred James




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