Download and Create Live image or LiveUSB
To download a prebuilt 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
- It is not possible to choose a non-default filesystem.
- Once you turn of your computer with LiveCD running, you will lose any settings or packages installed.
Fedora Live image features
Current features:
- Read-write rootfs so it's possible to install software while the livecd is running
- Install to hard disk or usb drives
- Use SELinux in enforcing mode and other security features by default
- Stay as close to a normal desktop install wrt. features
- Ability to create normal CD-ROM and CD-R media (less than 700MB) or DVD images
- Included best of breed software on the media
- Make it easy to do a derived livecd with your own repositories, packages and art work
- Data persistence
- 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.
Finding the Code
The source code for the live CD tools is maintained in git. The repository is at 'git://git.fedoraproject.org/git/hosted/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.