If you are inclined to try the excellent INSERT Live mini credit-card sized CD, you might also try the excellent KANOTIX Live full-sized CD. Apart from having Kernel 2.6.6 and Captive NTFS support, and a full Knoppix desktop, and more besides, KANOTIX also provides a ten-minute HD installation of clean DEBIAN.

To summarize KANOTIX info:

KANOTIX BUG HUNTER 06/2004 RELEASE: This is a Linux Live CD based on KNOPPIX technology using mostly pure Debian/sid, which includes Kernel 2.6.6, ACPI and DMA enabled by default (can be disabled with acpi=off respectively nodma), i586 optimization, AVM Fritz!Card DSL support, Eagle USB DSL support, KDE 3.2.2, OpenOffice 1.1.1, Captive 1.1.5 (NTFS Read-Write), ALSA (included in kernel), GRUB boot loader for CD start - ideal for rescue in command line mode, Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool in the extra menu of the boot loader. Note the Captuve-NTFS and GRUB boot loader features. By using GRUB, I experience no live boot problems with otherwise difficult or impossible DVD/CD-ROM drives.

KANOTIX notes: "Don't try to write to NTFS partitions using the standard NTFS driver included with the kernel, as its support for writing is very lacking, thus it could destroy the partition and the data in it. There is a new Captive NTFS driver that does a better job at writing to NTFS, so use it instead. For FAT partitions you can enable write-access with the context menu (right mouse button). You may not have the rights to modify Linux partitions, use the root mode in konsole if needed. Some links are not working in the menu - that is not my fault - the packages from Debian/sid are very new and may have some little bugs, but you can always use new releases. If you find other bugs feel free to post them in the forum."

Information: http://kanotix.com/info/index.php

download: ftp://debian.tu-bs.de/kanotix/

download: http://debian.tu-bs.de/kanotix/

download: ftp://ftp.fbihome.de/linux/kanotix/KANOTIX-current/