Last fall, I had to start running a pure 64 bit OS as the native OS on my pcs, and Debian 7.6 live, adapted in a "Knoppix" way and remastered several times, has served me very well. But, typically for the pure-Debian bunch, so much was changed wrt live booting and persistence in Debian 8.0.0 that I gave up upgrading. Furthermore, Oracle XE 11g has not survived the remasterings, and I have for now given up on making it work again. (It once did.)
So I am in a sort of squeeze for the moment, not being able to upgrade the OS, and without a working Oracle version. But VMware Workstation 10 works very well, and I have turned to running Knoppix 7.X in virtual machines to solve the problems coused by the native OS version. Once installed, that works extremely well. There are a few inherent problems, though. To avoid them, use Ryumbekes adapted miniroots (see threads in News), and create a new ISO image after remastering. There may also be problems increasing the persistent store, so I strongly suggest that to be set at 6+ GB from the beginning.
Even though it should in principle be possible, I have not been able to run with 64 bits kernel in VMs - but for this kind of use, it's not really all-important: Computationally heavy tasks are of course run natively.
I'm running a typical development system in Knoppix 7.X VM, with Oracle XE 10g, Eclipse EE, JBoss/Tomcat, Maven etc. It is in fact quite similar to Windows virtual machines (VDIs) we use for the same purpose at work, only much better, faster and more versatile. So whenever I can, I work in Knoppix. With just 8-10 GB total size, it's also very handy to take around, fits "everywhere" nowadays. And it's easy to make different variants to cater for different versions of components and tools.
With the upcoming Knoppix release, I will try to create a VM as soon as possible, and probably use that for a lot of daily tasks - instead of taking the trouble to upgrade the "native" OS. (No more ordinary hard disk installs for me, just live versions with persistent store.)
Dell SNPTP9W1C/16G 16 GB 2666MHz (PC4-2666) Memory Ram
$34.95
Crucial 8GB 1x8GB PC RAM PC3L 12800U DDR3 1600MHz Desktop Memory DIMM
$8.36
A-Tech 8GB DDR3 1600 PC3-12800 Laptop SODIMM 204-Pin Memory RAM PC3L DDR3L 1x 8G
$13.99
Team Group Elite+ 16GB (8GBx2) DDR4 2400MHz RAM (TPRD48G2400HC16BK)
$23.99
Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 32GB (2 x 16GB) PC RAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Memory
$54.99
Crucial DDR3L 16GB 1600 2x 8GB PC3-12800 Laptop SODIMM Memory RAM PC3 16G DDR3
$22.45
Micron 16GB DDR4-2400 SODIMM MTA16ATF2G64HZ-2G3E1 Laptop Memory RAM
$21.99
NEW OLOy 16GB 2x8GB KIT DDR4-3000 PC4-24000 Desktop Gaming RAM MD4U0830160BB1ST
$19.99
128GB Kit 4x 32GB PC4-17000 LRDIMM DELL POWEREDGE R730xd R730 R630 Memory RAM
$127.96
HYNIX HMT31GR7BFR4C-H9 8GB PC3-10600R DDR3-1333MHZ 2Rx4 (LOT OF 8) DRAT-3
$999.00