Live CD issues

[shankster]

I apologize in advance if I'm asking this question in the wrong section of the forum.
New to Linux, and looking for the distro best suited to my needs. I watched tons of YouTube videos and settled on Linux Lite. I downloaded the ISO (version 2.4, 32 bit), burned it to DVD (at the slowest speed), and booted it up. Everything's fine until I go to "Lite Software", which wants to "Update software sources", which I say OK to. After a minute or two I get an error "Updating sources has failed". I also try to "Install updates" (I know this isn't essential when working from the live CD, but I tried anyway). I get a list of updates, it downloads the updates, but a couple of minutes into the installation I get another error "Linux Lite updates has failed". The point of trying the live CD before installing is to "kick the tires" so to speak, but these issues make it difficult to see all the distro can do. Fearing I might have a bad DVD I redo the download / burn with a new disk and a different computer .... same result. Are there limited things you can do from the live CD, or am I missing something?
Thanks in advance for any comments or suggections.

[OldGuy]

The updates you're running needs free space to write the files to - a CD isn't suitable for that.  I suppose a CD-RW setup as an drive might work but that's doubtful.  If your system will boot from USB, get a 4 GB thumb drive and "burn" the ISO to that as a USB stick works just like a hard drive.  While updates are important to an installed system, they aren't necessary to give the system a test drive...

[torreydale]

In general, you cannot install updates in the Live CD environment.  When you think about it, where would it install the updates?  Your DVD?  Your 2GB of memory?

Using Lite Software, I have had a relative in another city successfully install Teamviewer (and only Teamviewer) in the Live CD environment so that I could remotely take over the install to their hard drive.  But they were using a bootable 8GB USB flash drive as their installation media, and not a DVD ROM.  Furthermore, the machine had 4GB of RAM.  Somewhere in the combination of those two things was enough space for Lite Software to update the software sources and install that one package.

Before installing, I mainly use Live CDs to see how video will perform on YouTube and to see whether it automatically recognizes the wifi adapter and printer.  Those are the main things I prepare myself to address if they aren't immediately recognized in the Live CD. 

Getting basic familiarity with the desktop environment and default software packages of a distro is a good use for a Live CD.  Another use is for troubleshooting or security.  For example, a YouTuber mentioned he just throws away the flash drives he receives from vendors at conferences because he doesn't trust them.  I can see his point, but as a workaround, I booted to a Linux Live CD.  It just happened to be on a DVD ROM.  When I got to the desktop of the Live DVD, I inserted that vendor's USB flash drive, and then I used a formatting tool on that distro to repartition and low level format that USB flash drive.  I felt save because the Live DVD was read only; the only place for the USB to write anything was my memory, which would have cleared itself upon reboot; and if there was anything malicious on that vendor USB, it was probably written for Windows and not Linux.

Now I have a free 8GB USB drive that I can use to help more people install Linux Lite!