Tip for running LiveCDs on borderline systems

[Kam Leo]

On 9/26/07, Michael Wiktowy <michael.wiktowy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This may be obvious to some but it wasn't to me so I thought that I
> would pass it along just in case it helps someone else.
>
> I have an old laptop that is having issues trying to run any recent
> LiveCD (Dell Latitude 700MHz with 128 MB RAM) because it does not meet
> the minimum recommended system requirements. This makes it kind of
> difficult to use some of the more recent utilities contained on those
> CDs for data recovery, forensics, troubleshooting, etc. where you
> don't want to put a swap partition on the built-in drive.
>
> I also have a bunch of redundant 256 MB USB thumb drives which sit
> unused since multi-gig sticks are cheap as dirt now.
>
> I was able to get the old laptop to run the recent LiveCDs by
> formatting the thumb drive as a linux swap partition and using it
> during boot. Recent LiveCDs will recognize and use the swap partition
> on the USB stick and allow you to completely load the desktop.
>
> It is not a quick boot ... but it might make the difference between
> working and not. I would certainly recommend a LiveCD that uses XFCE
> by default.
>
> There are many other ways of doing this but this is a simple one that
> keeps two things out of the dumpster.
>
> /Mike

Doesn't using the flash drive as a swap disk shorten its life span?