[ale] Live CD to drop on my Dad's computer over thanksgiving?

[Jeff Hubbs]

Joshua Kite wrote:

> Maybe I've been attributing sluggishness to the wrong thing, but I 
> assumed that the RAM disk also made a difference.  Doesn't that lead 
> to full memory and making more use of the swap file?

Unless Knoppix automatically finds and fires up an existing swap 
partition on a hard disk (which is generally going to be a safe 
operation in all cases unless it's a machine that is hibernated) or is 
made to do so, the machine runs swaplessly.  RAM disk is far from a 
sluggishness source; it's the fastest filesystem you can make!  Really, 
it's CD-ROM spin-up/down and overall I/O rate that makes Knoppix slow; 
that's the case with most LiveCDs.  Even a Gentoo LiveCD will do that 
when you type shell commands that haven't been used yet.