14 DAY TRIAL // Daniel Baumann has announced the initiative to create a Live Debian CD distribution "Debian is the Universal Operating System: IMHO we should have an official live system for showing around and to officially represent the true, one and only Debian system."
There are already a number of live distributions based on Debian, most notably Knoppix, which have enjoyed success. According to Baumann however, most of these suffer from disadvantages: - They mix different distributions (testing & unstable) - Only support i386, they change package's behavior and/or appearance by stripping them down to save space - They include unofficial packages - They ship custom kernels with additional patches not part of Debian - They are large and slow due to size and thus not suitable for rescue issues - Not available in different flavors, e.g. CDs, DVDs, USB-stick and netboot images.
The project is still in the planning phase but Baumann expects three basic images: a base-system for rescue purposes, a desktop-system for demonstration purposes and a special "diagnose-system" for device functionality and detection purposes.
However, it is still much, much too early for a release date. The project homepage at live.debian.net will probably contain some more information in the following days, due to community interest.