The case of Ramboot: Pros and cons and how to disable it – if needed.

Nowadays, when making a live cd/dvd distribution there exists an option to load the entire iso image to the Ram memory and run it from there. Below, I will list few pros and cons related to this approach.

Pros.

*You can remove your boot media after the os has loaded to the live-mode.

*When the load has been completed the system remains faster (since it does not need to retrieve anything from an external media).

*Ramboot state is generally speaking a lot more stable than the traditional live-mode and thus you can compile things and test different ideas without the fear of crashes (in most cases).

Cons.

*Ramboot does require some Ram in order to function as intended. For example, my 4gb machine loads the iso within 30 seconds while my friends needs to wait about two minutes for the system to load when having about 1gb of Ram.

*Ramboot might lead to instabilities if the computer is very aged (meaning a decade old).

How to disable the Ramboot feature and run the regular live-mode

Maybe you decide that you want your live-mode the be as fast to load as it can be. Sure enough, disabling Ramboot can dramatically decrease the load time. Since I used Ramboot as a default parameter within Audax 0.2. you should do the following simple trick – if you wish – to disable it and run the regular live-mode.

1. Boot the Audax 0.2. media.

2. Once you are in the Boot menu and you have live (audax) entry selected press the Tab key ().

3. Pressing the Tab key shows you the boot parameters of a given menu entry. Now, go and remove the line, which says toram . Now, press the enter key and your system will boot to a regular live-mode, which has the Ramboot feature disabled.

The procedure described above should be applicable to most Debian based distributions, which come with a live-mode that has Ramboot enabled out of the box. Do keep in mind that only the live-mode uses the Ramboot feature. Once you,for example, install Audax 0.2. then the system behaves just like a normal Linux distribution.