This is a "LiveCD Tutorial". This tutorial introduces and helps you in running Ubuntu LiveCD on your computer. It offers a lot of benefits including unlimited working, trying out, and recovering data from a broken system, without changing your computer, many of those are impossible with proprietary OSes like Windows and MacOS. To clarify, we call it "livecd" regardless it is cd or dvd or usb used as the medium. Finally, livecd is very fast and you will be able to start it for 1 minute or even faster. Now let's try it out!

(A livecd session of Ubuntu on an old Thinkpad laptop)

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Step 1. Prepare an Ubuntu LiveCD

If you do not have a CD or DVD containing Ubuntu (this is called LiveCD), alternatively you can download it at no cost then burn it into a usb flash drive (this is also called LiveUSB). Because of the abundance of usb flash drives today, and the decrease of CDs/DVDs, we recommend you to use it in the rest of this tutorial. You can use any brand of such device such as Adata, Kingston, SanDisk, Toshiba etc.

Step 2. Boot Up Your Computer with LiveCD

Turn your computer off.

Plug your Ubuntu usb flash drive in to your computer.

Turn your computer on.

Computer will show a list of options and you just need to wait for a few seconds.

Next, computer will show Ubuntu logo on screen instead of Windows or macOS and indicates a process is going on. This process is called "booting up".

Step 3. Enter LiveCD Session

After Ubuntu logo screen finishes its process, computer screen will show Ubuntu desktop.

Select "Try Ubuntu" option instead of "Install Ubuntu".

Ubuntu Desktop in livecd session is ready to use. 

(Picture 2: entering livecd session with options shown on screen)

Step 4. Important Things to Remember

All data in livecd session is stored in your RAM and not your hard disk.

All data you stored when using livecd is gone when shutting down and restart.

Except you saved that data into hard disk before shutting down or restarting.

So if you write an article, download a movie, install an application, make history of web browsing, everything will be deleted by a shut down or a restart, unless you saved them first to your hard disk. 

(Picture 3: a livecd session with internet access, web browsing, document editing and file exploring activities all working without changes to your computer)

Step 5. What You Can Do with LiveCD?

1) Everything you can do with normally installed Ubuntu, Windows, MacOS system, can be done with livecd and beyond.

2) You can try an Ubuntu version, unlimited, without changing your computer. This is impossible with Windows and macOS.

3) You can run apps in the livecd such as Files, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.

4) You can connect to the internet and local area network and bluetooth.

5) You can install applications from tens of thousands offered freely by Ubuntu.

6) You can access your broken Windows system to repair it or save the data into another disk storage. For example, if it experiences boot failure because of missing some important files, you can copy and paste them back from a healthy system by using livecd.

7) You can do antivirus scan from livecd to your malware infected Windows system in order to clean it up. It cannot be done vice versa.

8) You can do any form of testing, experiencing, researching, working, recovering or anything meaningful in computing using livecd including things we do not know yet.

Step 6. What you cannot do with livecd?

You cannot store in the livecd session more than your RAM capacity or livecd capacity. That's the limit.

References

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

https://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2020/02/living-lively-with-livecd.html

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