“Knoppix, which is a complete bootable Linux on a CD, has become
my rescue disk of choice. An excellent introduction to Knoppix
appeared in developerWorks a few months ago…“My old mainstays were Tom’s Root Boot, ‘The most GNU/Linux on
one floppy disk,’ and Peter Anvin’s SuperRescue CD, ‘An
overfeatured rescue CD.’ Both are first-rate Linux rescue disks.
One of my favorite show-off tricks is to do a complete bare-metal
system rebuild, using only a Tom’s Root Boot disk and an Internet
connection.“As CD-ROMs became standard on PCs, I wore out several
SuperRescue CDs. However, it is based on Red Hat 7.2, which is a
great Red Hat but is also an old Red Hat. So, 7.2 does not have the
hardware support, such as USB or wireless, found in later
distributions…”