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.)
NEW OEM Dell Inspiron 14 5406 P126G Laptop Battery 11.25V 40Wh JK6Y6 CF5RH
$37.00
Genuine 45W Power Adapter Charger for Dell DA45NM140 0KXTTW 4.5*3.0mm OEM
$16.99
OEM Dell Latitude 7420 14 Genuine Laptop Battery 11.4V 42Wh 3500 GH5Y5 9JM71
$33.20
OEM 130W USB-C Type-C Charger for Dell XPS 15 9500 9570 9575 17 9700 DA130PM170
$35.88
OEM Dell Inspiron 11 13 14 15 17 3000 5000 7000 AC Adapter Charger 65W 4.5mm Tip
$10.99
Genuine OEM Dell 90W Laptop Charger AC Adapter 19.5V 4.62A 50-60 Hz white tip
$8.74
OEM DELL 65W AC Adapter Charger 7.4mm Latitude 7490 7480 E7440 E7450 E7470 E7270
$11.88
OEM Dell 90W Laptop Charger AC Adapter 19.5V 4.62A 50-60 Hz Latitude, XPS
$8.74
Dell OEM Latitude 12 Rugged 7214 / 7204 Touchscreen LCD Complete Assembly
$44.99
New Dell OEM Latitude E6420 XFR Rugged 14" Touchscreen WXGAHD LCD Screen Display
$99.00