Debian 10225 Published by

DarkDuck takes a look at the Debian KDE Live DVD



I won't ask you if you know what Debian is. Surely you do.
Instead, I'll ask you what Desktop Environment does Debian have? The most likely answer here would be GNOME. That is because GNOME comes as default for Debian. But of course such a Universal Operating System like Debian cannot have only one Desktop Environment available. If you look at Download page, you'll find other options there: KDE, LXDE and XFCE. Last two are actually shipped on same CD image. But the KDE one is most interesting for me because it was on the 4th place of users poll for best KDE distro, ahead of such KDE-centric distros like Pardus or Aptosid.

Unfortunately, I could not review Debian Live before. Live images were released later than install ISO images of Debian Squeeze, and by that time I simply forgot about this option for Debian.
Anyway, now it was time for me to come back to Debian Live project and get ISO image of Debian KDE Live. It weights about 1.1 Gb, significantly more that normal install CD.
Debian Live can be downloaded in 2 types of ISO images. ISOs themselves are hybrid images which can be either burnt onto DVD or dd'ed to USB stick. Command dd is a method described in official documentation. Hybrid images require modern BIOS, which is unfortunately not the case for my laptop Fijitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1505. Even the latest BIOS with index 1.14 does not support hybrid images. That's why I had to use the second type of images with extension .img. Method of Live USB creation is the same: command dd.
As a result of my investigations, I created both Live USB and DVD-RW. Both of them worked, but just for the sake of convenience, I will stick to DVD-RW option in this review of Debian KDE Live.
So, ISO image was recorded onto DVD-RW.Reboot. Choose to boot from optical drive. Let's go!
  Debian KDE: Performance, Comfort and Stability