What's a live version of Linux? Are some versions dead? Hmmm... that could be a trick question. 
In this case, all "Live" means is, that you can run it from a USB thumb drive. You don't actually have to install it to your hard drive.
If you go to a site like
distrowatch.com
... and you look at the list on the right side of the page, you will see a list of 100 Linux distro's. The list doesn't show "the most popular".
It shows which distro pages got the most hits recently. The list changes order from time to time, and the distro that got the most hits last week, isn't necessarily the one that will get the most hits next week. There are more 100 Linux distros. (distributions) out there. This is just this week's "hit list".
Yesterday, I wrote an article about to burn a Linux distro to a USB drive from Windows.
The question inevitably becomes... "which distro do I use?" The dreaded distro question.
Well, I'm going to go ahead and recommend a few here. Not because they're better than other distros, but because you can run them "live".
There are several advantages to live distros. It's a good way to get your feet wet without diving in over your head.
Maybe you won't even like Linux. It's not for everybody (am I allowed to say that on Linux site?). But this is an easy way to try it without installing it to your hard drive. If you like it, you can always install it later. Another advantage to doing this, is that you know if all your hardware works with Linux. Your video card, your network chipset, your wi-fi, your sound card, all the things you want to work
when you're using your computer.
Another advantage to running "Live" versions of Linux, is that you can try many different distros easily. If you happen to have 4 or 5 USB thumb drives laying around, put a different distro on each one and try them all. If you only have one or two thumb drives. You just "over-write" the distro you tried yesterday and try a different version today. Keep trying until you find one you like.
The main disadvantage to "Live" distros, is that they are meant to be "light-weight". They don't have a lot of stuff installed on them. Typically you get the minimum number of applications. A desktop, a browsers, a command line, some network tools to get you on-line, and maybe a couple of office type applications like a word processor. If you're lucky they might have one simple game. If you have a discrete video card like an nvidia geforce or an AMD radeon, chances are, the "Live" version won't have your video drivers included. Linux will still run, you just might not get the best video performance out of the box.
When you go to a distro's web site. You will often see a choice of different versions of the same distro.
It's not bad enough that you have to pick a distro. Now there is an additional choice of which version of that distro do I use?
When I say version here... I don't necessarily mean which release. I'll explain.
Often Linux distro sites, will have iso's that you can download, and they will say something like...
workstation.iso, or server.iso, or boot.iso or netboot.iso, and usually something like full-dvd.iso. Which one do we use. You want the one that says "live.iso". You can always install the "full-blown" version later once you find a distro that you like.
The other thing, is you will see different releases, like release 2023 or release 2024, or maybe release 33 or release 34. As a rule, I recommend the newest/latest version unless there is a specific reason not to use it.
Finally, there is sometimes a 32-bit version, and a 64-bit version. If you're not sure, go with the 64-bit version. I would guess 95% of the people reading this have 64-bit computers.
Hopefully all of this makes sense. it's a lot to digest. So here we go, these aren't necessarily in any order.
Mint-live. - https://www.linuxmint.com/download_all.php - The current version is 22.1
One thing I don't like about the Mint website, is that it makes you pick a desktop environment before you do anything else.
For Mint, I would recommend the "cinnamon" desktop. "mate" would probably be my second choice if you're not familiar with
the different desktops. The next thing, is you have to pick a mirror. In my opinion, this should be automated, because you don't really know which one is the closest to you, so about the best you can do is pick the country closest to you, but that will usually work fine.
Puppy-live - https://forum.puppylinux.com/puppy-linux-collection, they have a weird versioning system, based on the distro that the version you download is based on. (how is that for confusing?) Any of them are fine, but I would recommend the 12 - Bookworm - BookwormPup64 (64-bit) version. One of the great things about Puppy Linux, is that it runs in RAM. This is handy if you have a slow hard drive, or in this case, a slow USB drive.
Porteus-live - http://www.porteus.org/downloads (warning, this is not a secure web site). You would think they would fix their SSL certificate.
Fedora Live Workstation - https://fedoraproject.org/en/workstation/download - you'll probably want the x86_64 version.
Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop - https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop This is larger than most of the other images. Almost 6GB,
make sure your USB drive is big enough. 4GB won't work.
MX Linux - https://mxlinux.org/download-links/ - I would recommend the Xfce-MX-23.5_x64 version for MX.
Parrot Linux, - https://parrotsec.org/download/, click on "Live", then click on "Home Edition" and finally click on "AMD64".
Debian Live - https://www.debian.org/CD/live/ - Under the "stable" section, I would recommend either the "Live-gnome" or "Live-KDE" iso.
So there you have it. Those are my recommendations. Not because they are better than other Linux's, but simply because they have "Live" versions. I know Kali has a live version, but I did not include it here. If you're not familiar with Linux, it's not the distro to start with. There's nothing wrong with that distro. (I have it on VM right now), I just don't recommend it for those not familiar with Linux.
I'm sure I missed a few other distros that have a "Live" version. If you know of one, please feel free to post it below.
But now that you know where to get a "Live" Linux version, and you know how to burn it to a USB drive. Nothing should be stopping you from giving Linux a try.
In this case, all "Live" means is, that you can run it from a USB thumb drive. You don't actually have to install it to your hard drive.
If you go to a site like
DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.
News and feature lists of Linux and BSD distributions.
It shows which distro pages got the most hits recently. The list changes order from time to time, and the distro that got the most hits last week, isn't necessarily the one that will get the most hits next week. There are more 100 Linux distros. (distributions) out there. This is just this week's "hit list".
Yesterday, I wrote an article about to burn a Linux distro to a USB drive from Windows.
There are multiple ways to do this. This is one way.
First, we need a Linux image file or iso. You can download these from different places. Usually these are downloaded
into your "Downloads" folder.
You need to know how large these are. You see some in my list here anywhere from 13GB down to about 800MB.
Make sure you have a USB drive that is large enough to hold the OS image that you downloaded. It can be bigger.
But it cannot be smaller. Go ahead and place your USB drive in your computer. Note: whatever is on this drive will be erased.
Download balena...
First, we need a Linux image file or iso. You can download these from different places. Usually these are downloaded
into your "Downloads" folder.
You need to know how large these are. You see some in my list here anywhere from 13GB down to about 800MB.
Make sure you have a USB drive that is large enough to hold the OS image that you downloaded. It can be bigger.
But it cannot be smaller. Go ahead and place your USB drive in your computer. Note: whatever is on this drive will be erased.
Download balena...
The question inevitably becomes... "which distro do I use?" The dreaded distro question.
Well, I'm going to go ahead and recommend a few here. Not because they're better than other distros, but because you can run them "live".
There are several advantages to live distros. It's a good way to get your feet wet without diving in over your head.
Maybe you won't even like Linux. It's not for everybody (am I allowed to say that on Linux site?). But this is an easy way to try it without installing it to your hard drive. If you like it, you can always install it later. Another advantage to doing this, is that you know if all your hardware works with Linux. Your video card, your network chipset, your wi-fi, your sound card, all the things you want to work
when you're using your computer.
Another advantage to running "Live" versions of Linux, is that you can try many different distros easily. If you happen to have 4 or 5 USB thumb drives laying around, put a different distro on each one and try them all. If you only have one or two thumb drives. You just "over-write" the distro you tried yesterday and try a different version today. Keep trying until you find one you like.
The main disadvantage to "Live" distros, is that they are meant to be "light-weight". They don't have a lot of stuff installed on them. Typically you get the minimum number of applications. A desktop, a browsers, a command line, some network tools to get you on-line, and maybe a couple of office type applications like a word processor. If you're lucky they might have one simple game. If you have a discrete video card like an nvidia geforce or an AMD radeon, chances are, the "Live" version won't have your video drivers included. Linux will still run, you just might not get the best video performance out of the box.
When you go to a distro's web site. You will often see a choice of different versions of the same distro.
It's not bad enough that you have to pick a distro. Now there is an additional choice of which version of that distro do I use?
When I say version here... I don't necessarily mean which release. I'll explain.
Often Linux distro sites, will have iso's that you can download, and they will say something like...
workstation.iso, or server.iso, or boot.iso or netboot.iso, and usually something like full-dvd.iso. Which one do we use. You want the one that says "live.iso". You can always install the "full-blown" version later once you find a distro that you like.
The other thing, is you will see different releases, like release 2023 or release 2024, or maybe release 33 or release 34. As a rule, I recommend the newest/latest version unless there is a specific reason not to use it.
Finally, there is sometimes a 32-bit version, and a 64-bit version. If you're not sure, go with the 64-bit version. I would guess 95% of the people reading this have 64-bit computers.
Hopefully all of this makes sense. it's a lot to digest. So here we go, these aren't necessarily in any order.
Mint-live. - https://www.linuxmint.com/download_all.php - The current version is 22.1
One thing I don't like about the Mint website, is that it makes you pick a desktop environment before you do anything else.
For Mint, I would recommend the "cinnamon" desktop. "mate" would probably be my second choice if you're not familiar with
the different desktops. The next thing, is you have to pick a mirror. In my opinion, this should be automated, because you don't really know which one is the closest to you, so about the best you can do is pick the country closest to you, but that will usually work fine.
Puppy-live - https://forum.puppylinux.com/puppy-linux-collection, they have a weird versioning system, based on the distro that the version you download is based on. (how is that for confusing?) Any of them are fine, but I would recommend the 12 - Bookworm - BookwormPup64 (64-bit) version. One of the great things about Puppy Linux, is that it runs in RAM. This is handy if you have a slow hard drive, or in this case, a slow USB drive.
Porteus-live - http://www.porteus.org/downloads (warning, this is not a secure web site). You would think they would fix their SSL certificate.
Fedora Live Workstation - https://fedoraproject.org/en/workstation/download - you'll probably want the x86_64 version.
Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop - https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop This is larger than most of the other images. Almost 6GB,
make sure your USB drive is big enough. 4GB won't work.
MX Linux - https://mxlinux.org/download-links/ - I would recommend the Xfce-MX-23.5_x64 version for MX.
Parrot Linux, - https://parrotsec.org/download/, click on "Live", then click on "Home Edition" and finally click on "AMD64".
Debian Live - https://www.debian.org/CD/live/ - Under the "stable" section, I would recommend either the "Live-gnome" or "Live-KDE" iso.
So there you have it. Those are my recommendations. Not because they are better than other Linux's, but simply because they have "Live" versions. I know Kali has a live version, but I did not include it here. If you're not familiar with Linux, it's not the distro to start with. There's nothing wrong with that distro. (I have it on VM right now), I just don't recommend it for those not familiar with Linux.
I'm sure I missed a few other distros that have a "Live" version. If you know of one, please feel free to post it below.
But now that you know where to get a "Live" Linux version, and you know how to burn it to a USB drive. Nothing should be stopping you from giving Linux a try.
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