FedoraLiveCD

Download and Create Live image or LiveUSB
To download a pre-built Fedora Live image, visit the download page. Then you can either:


 * Burn the ISO to a CD or DVD. See here for burning instructions.
 * Learn how to create and use Live USB.

If you want to build and then burn your own custom ISO, see How to create and use a Live CD.

Advantages and Limitations
Benefits:
 * You can demonstrate features or try out a release, including testing hardware functionality, before installation.
 * You can use LiveCD for backup and recovery of your installed hard drive.
 * Live USB/CD/DVD installation is faster than regular installation. Live USB installation typically takes only a few minutes.

Limitations:
 * It is not possible to choose packages during installation. Live images typically have fewer packages than a regular installation image.
 * It is not possible to do an upgrade via Anaconda, the installer. If you have a separate /home partition, you can just not format it during the installation and thus preserve your settings.
 * It is not possible to choose a non-default filesystem.
 * Once you turn off your computer with LiveCD running, you will lose any settings or packages installed.

Fedora Live image features
Current features:


 * 1) Read-write rootfs so it's possible to install software while the livecd is running
 * 2) Install to hard disk or usb drives
 * 3) Use SELinux in enforcing mode and other security features by default
 * 4) Stay as close to a normal desktop install wrt. features
 * 5) Ability to create normal CD-ROM and CD-R media (less than 700MB) or DVD images
 * 6) Included best of breed software on the media
 * 7) Make it easy to do a derived livecd with your own repositories, packages and art work
 * 8) Data persistence
 * 9) API used by LTSP, appliance creator and others

Contributors

 * DavidZeuthen - Primary developer and maintainer of HAL and OLPC contributor
 * JeremyKatz - Fedora Ninja. Adds backend for installing from a live image into  Anaconda
 * DouglasMcClendon - LiveOS device mapper trickster

Communicate
Fedora Live image users and developers can participate and contribute in the discussions happening in the Fedora Live CD list.
 * (predecessor list archives)

Finding the Code
The source code for the live CD tools is maintained in git. The repository is at 'git://git.fedorahosted.org/livecd' and can be browsed via the gitweb interface. You can install it easily by installing the 'livecd-tools' package.

Kickstart files are in the spin-kickstarts.noarch package.

Hard Drive Installation
The ability to install to the hard drive is available in Fedora 7 and above releases. After the live media boots, click on the install icon on your desktop to start the installation. Installation from live image requires that GRUB and the /boot directory be installed onto a drive with an MSDOS partition label, or that the current machine supports EFI booting. If a pc-clone machine has only GPT harddrives then you may need to use something such as a USB2.0 flash memory device (with an MSDOS partition label) as an intermediate destination.

In Fedora 15, instead of clicking the desktop icon, choose Applications->System Tools->Install to Hard Drive from the menu along the top of the screen.

Media References

 * IBM Developer Works: Build a Fedora 6 Live CD