Re: [school-discuss] bootable CDs for a MAC?

1. CentOS
CentOS as a group is a community of open source contributors and users. Typical CentOS users are organisations and individuals that do not need strong commercial support in order to achieve successful operation. CentOS is 100% compatible rebuild of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in full compliance with Red Hat's redistribution requirements. CentOS is for people who need an enterprise class operating system stability without the cost of certification and support.

2. Fedora Core
The Fedora Project is an openly-developed project designed by Red Hat, open for general participation, led by a meritocracy, following a set of project objectives. The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software. Development will be done in a public forum. The project will produce time-based releases of Fedora Core about 2-3 times a year, with a public release schedule. The Red Hat engineering team will continue to participate in building Fedora Core and will invite and encourage more outside participation than in past releases. By using this more open process, we hope to provide an operating system more in line with the ideals of free software and more appealing to the open source community.

3. Finnix
Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian GNU/Linux. You can use it to mount and manipulate hard drives and partitions, monitor networks, rebuild boot records, install other operating systems, and much more.

4. Kubuntu
Kubuntu is an Ubuntu-derived distribution. The Kubuntu CDs are made up of Ubuntu's base plus KDE. You can get exactly the same effect by installing Ubuntu and adding the KDE packages from the Ubuntu archives.

5. Mandriva Linux
Mandriva Linux (formerly Mandrakelinux) was created in 1998 with the goal of making Linux easier to use for everyone. At that time, Linux was already well-known as a powerful and stable operating system that demanded strong technical knowledge and extensive use of the "command line"; MandrakeSoft saw this as an opportunity to integrate the best graphical desktop environments and contribute its own graphical configuration utilities and quickly became famous for setting the standard in ease-of-use and functionality. With this innovative approach, Mandriva Linux offers all the power and stability of Linux to both individuals and professional users in an easy-to-use and pleasant environment. Thousands of new users are discovering Linux each and every day and finding it a complete replacement for their previous operating system. Linux as a server or workstation has no reason to be jealous of any other more established operating systems.

6. PLD Linux Distribution
PLD is a Linux distribution developed since 1998 mainly in Poland. It is a product of bevy of Linux enthusiasts. We have around 200 people expressing their interests in developing PLD, however, number of actively working developers is approximately 50. PLD stands for PLD Linux Distribution. The distribution provides two specialized and powerfull RPM managers: a clone of Debian's apt, and our own, called "poldek".

7. SystemRescueCD
SystemRescueCd is a Linux system on a bootable CD-ROM for repairing your system and your data after a crash. It also aims to provide an easy way to carry out admin tasks on your computer, such as creating and editing the partitions of the hard disk. It contains many of system utilities (parted, partimage, fstools, ...) and basic ones (editors, Midnight Commander, network tools). It aims to be very easy to use: just boot from the CD-ROM, and you can do everything. The kernel of the system supports most important file systems (ext2/ext3, ReiserFS, XFS, JFS, VFAT, NTFS, ISO9660), and network ones (Samba and NFS). SystemRescueCd is based on the Gentoo Live CD.

8. Ubuntu
Ubuntu is a complete desktop Linux operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Manifesto: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit. "Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.