Lions and Snow Leopards

Ever heard Lions and Snow Leopards living in the same home.
In Sri-Lanka Lions and Leopards live in such close proximity and in harmony only a terrorist can drive them mad.
I hear they cannot simply because they are proprietary products from Apple Mac.
Some time ago I wanted to write something Apple computer and final cut but for no reason I could not.
It was a very fortunate lapse on my part and had I done that I may have to eat every word of my short piece.
The other day I happen to walk into Kandy Super market and I saw something very similar to Pinguy and drop into see who is promoting Linux in Kandy.
I was wrong and it was a posh Apple Mac store but I could not see any iPods.
All the computers had Snow Leopard but not the new Lion roaring. It looks like they are dishing out the last remains of Snow Leopards on unsuspecting but rich customers.
Just yesterday I posted and updated today that one can install four Linux distribution in over 2 and half hours and make them cohabit but unfortunately Snow Leopard and Lion can hardly ever cohabit in the same computer.
The trouble one has to go to install (which has two disks) Snow Leopard on Lion computer only and expert can do that also on has two apple computers side by side with firmware attachment.
This guy who is a keen photographer wanted to transfer some photographic stuff from a camera and his old camera is not supported by the new Lion.
But if he gives his video to me I can convert them to many formats using ArtistX or AVLinux.
This poor guy, metaphorically of course (who is poor who can afford a new Apple computer) should learn some Linux be gets older like me.

Updating My Laptop at Night

I was waiting for the PCLinux2011 64 bits Version but it was never coming and decided to upgrade my laptop with a bigger hard disk which are becoming cheaper by the day.

The steps are

1. Remove the battery.

2. Remove the Hard disk.

3. Fixed the new Hard Disk and place the old one on a portable mini USB bay/tray.

4. Use gParted to partition the new hard disk (15 partition restriction applies for SATA Hard Drives.

5. Install Knoppix 10 th anniversary edition. No problem.

6. Install Pinguy. No problem with GRUB and detects Knoppix but painfully slow when updating on line.

7. Install Dropbox in about 5 minutes.

8. Install Sabayon 6 with no problem and detects both Knoppix and Pinguy. No problem with XBMC media center and mouse does not freeze.

9. Boot up Pinguy and let Dropbox synchronize and me go to sleep and it is 6 am in the morning.

10. Test the USB Hard Disk and boots up OK but slow and my data in old hard is intact. All these without paying any ransom to Microsoft and now I have 7 operating systems 4 on the old disk 3 on the new one with another 7 partitions left for install.

Two for Linux Image Storage in ntfs partition and three for Debian Sinhala another three for PCLinux 64 bits when it comes and I still have another partition for testing new Linux distribution and a FAT partition for posterity but sometimes destructive Linux distributions with my oversight might make me to reinstall all in one night of hectic work and the whole Saturday for me to go into sleep mode and have a couple of dreams for Maha Brahma.

Please note that installing was done in the night only because out Telecoms download is painfully slow for on line updates (takes ages if done day time) in day time and all Sri-Lankan including doctors on duty sleeping except poor Interns who have poor diagnostic skills.

Please do not get sick at night we do not have ambulances to take you to a hospital and the ambulance drivers also prefer a good night sleep. Then you might wonder me keeping up all night. Well I had to keep all night up when on call abroad often working for three others and patient prefer coming to me at night since i use to solve problems those GPs took ages to give an appointment let alone solve.

Those nightly habits are a bonus when one deals with computing in Linux not that Linux gives problems but often due to human errors like installing a root partition on some other distribution’s home partition due to wrong numbering of the partition table.

Higher Order Discipline not in Higher Education!

My virtual connection with Maha Brahma (yesteryear Kandy dog now the Maha’s Assistant acting on his behalf of, on leave of absence on a long vacation, Maha, the Proper Chief) was a blessing in disguise.

1. Maha tells me to dream even though the dreams never come true, like the dreams we had prior to the elections that disappeared into thin air.

For example healthy salary hike and retirement benefits (even the bonus interest for senior citizens who worked hard without going aboard for greener pastures was nullified within hours of re-election) we dreamed of are no longer valid even after lengthy industrial action.

2. Then he tells me to not to do any Kusala or Akusal Karma and only do Kriya or actions to suit the day to day living.

He says if I do that I will dream futuristic dreams which he can interpret for our consumption which is his hobby.

3. Then he tells me not to be a voter (de-register) and remain anonymous in the electoral list, so that I won’t go to hell and can remain as the Apaya (The Hell) Web Master General’s earthbound and worthwhile adviser and software engineer.

The last point I was practicing for the third decade but has not produced any tangible results but pain.
The second point I had to practiced for sometime now almost 2 decades because of the war and I cannot agree killing anybody for any cause as a true Buddhist.
There is no justification of any Killing from America to Middle East to Ceylon.

The first point of dreaming I was not comfortable till lately and was never a true dreamer in any sense.

In actual fact, I never had a dream except when I am sick and running a temperature especially as a kid, as a result of hallucination due to overdose of aspirin given by our own GP.

I was very realistic and did not expect any favors or miracles from anybody, even from heaven but my association with Maha through virtual email has opened up another hidden aspect of the ability to dream futuristic dreams like King of Kosol.

The third point above is the most outstanding realization of how democracy works here, there and currently.

In heaven there are no political parties Maha tells me.
Work is done with consensus and there is no room for compromise.
He tells me all the voters which ever party they belongs to end up in Hell and even in Hell they fight and had to be put in special cells for managing affairs in hell.

There is a proposal under study in Apaya to ban all political parties and their activities until the current server can transfer data to another super computer.

He tells me that giving political freedom to the poor Tamils in the North and East was wrong and many will end up in hell in future (as much as 50% who voted) unlike the time when Praba was running the show and many ended up in heaven due to no political activity or affiliations in them.

All these opened a new dimension in my thinking, just like lateral thinking of Professor De Bono’s.
If we ban political parties most of the division in society in disappear. That is his bone of contention and is not mine.

I was in fact thinking that we must ban all four major parties and re-organize our thinking on a scientific basis and form Citizen Groups of interest, just to represent pressure groups.
In other words make another political dimension and to which the Maha objected and asked me, if that fails like the other four parties what are you going to do?

I was speechless and his point is whichever the way we look at it, the democracy is as fallacious as it could be and never works.

Then I asked him shall I make a computer program to which he said Indian will find a way to manipulate it, like the IPL cricket.
Anyway go ahead and do something will you.

So I thought of a simple way to elect a President.

1. We give each human a ID nowadays and we can enter all the IDs into a computer (20 million data pieces for Sri-Lanka) server.
2. On the election day everybody keys in.
3. Computer selects the President from by random number generation protocol from ones who keyed in.
He becomes a President for three years irrespective of his intelligence or integrity.
4. The Vice President is selected with random number generation like before but with a slight difference. It has to be of the opposite sex of the already chosen President.
5. Cabinet is selected similarly with equal sex ratio and balance and all the relatives of the President and Vice President are ineligible for selection. Nepotism is rooted out.
6. One person can run in for three terms but never consecutively and if he or she is selected on two consecutive periods by random chance he or she has to skip the immediately subsequent period and let the Vice President takes over the mantel and after he/she finishes takes over without any election for the third period (save election expenditure).
7. If the President elect is incapacitated or dies of natural causes (if unnatural re-elections for both President and Vice President), there will be no President and a figurehead sort is, made of clay and the physical object becomes the President for the lapse period. This is the only period where voters (after the election one automatically becomes a voter even though he was a candidate just for a while) are not bothered by rulers and the Constitution and the Chief Justice takes over day to day running.

8. First priority of the first President is to re-structure the Constitution and make all existing constitution redundant.
10. The other important role is to arrest all the central bank administrators and their statisticians on charge of treason and make US dollar the currency circulating depending on the gold sovereign left in the bank if not stolen by thieves.

I do not know whether Maha will agree to this but in any way I am posting it as an email for his perusal and refinements.

Dream-12 and its interpretation from Heaven

I was dreamless for long period of time and may have to wind up dreaming now that the industrial action is all over, unless of course we may start it again if other side of the bargain counter is closed for new ideas and innovations.

I had a fragment of a dream and to keep Maha occupied in his job, rather his hobby, I posted it. The dream was on the day of the second part of the local election night where unlike the Cricket World Cup I was not at all interested because it was one horse race and the other horses were in the stable with the tails up.

The dream

I had gone out and I was stranded in a massive bus station newly developed after the war.

Location I cannot remember.

I can only remember my destination which was to go to Colombo and from there work myself back to Kandy.

The place was filthy in spite of being a newly developed site with filth was all over the place and even the filthy drainage spills into the floor of the bus station. Except me most of them were on roller skates to avoid the filth and dirty water and in that process of skating were splashing filth in waiting commuters including me.

There were lot of buses and they were all going to a godforsaken destination, again I cannot remember, somewhere in the direction Budulla or thereof towards the jungle terrain.

I asked several drivers and conductors and they said there are no buses to Colombo and the buses are plying only in the direction Badulla and beyond which was very unusual.

The usual routine is for the buses to ply towards Colombo and nothing from there to remote destinations like Budulla, especially after 6 P.M.

All those buses were chockablock and fill to capacity and there was noway I could have squeezed in and survived a trip.

The place looked like to me the real hell on earth and the stench was so unbearable I felt vomitish and soon I was woken up.

Maha was ready to blast off and I told that the industrial action was over.

That means you are not going to dream and I will miss my hobby.

Sort of that is unavoidable Sir.

Is it a good dream Sir.

Not really, he said.

What was the second part of the dream Sir.

There was no second part and with your composure that is as far as I would have let you dream or go free and that is as far as you would go on your own and it is towards the Server Master General.

It must be the newly built university computer center isn’t it?

I would be in charge of the database isn’t it?

No stupid.

Don’t you realize you were at the big Gate of the Hell and you were scanning the Computer Server.

My goodness!

Interpretation

There is no difference between the dream and the interpretation.

You were at the entrance to the Apaya. the Hell Gate International and you were on the Sri-Lankan Gate for Transit and the Computer Server doing the scanning of applications.

I remember you have sent a software to man the Apaya Server and it has eased the work but scrutiny takes a long time for Sri-Lankan applications.

There are lot of forgeries and wrong stamps on wrong pages.

The data entry is the slowest process but once they are entered correctly your software produce a token ring and you are immediately in a Apaya cell built for Sri-Lankans.

No more red tape.

It is not a bus station but a giant Server Station General (this is a French word) for Sri-Lankans entering Hell.

Don’t con Sir We Buddhist would never get there with all the Punya Karma and defeating the terrorism for good and making miracles in this Buddhist country.

You think so?

Yes sir.

Not a faintest chance the way you violate or not taken advantage of the elections, its administration and proper conduct.

In my estimate all the eligible voters ends up there in hell.

Either you do not make use of the franchise or if you use it you violate it in some way.

Upaya Chief has no alternatives but to scrutinize the violations and send you to hell for ages.

Is there a way to prevent it Sir.

Yes only one way.

By voting for the correct candidate Sir.

No stupid.

If you do not register as a eligible voter, then only you are safe.

In that case only Sinhalysa will be in Hell Sir, No Tamils?

It is not fare. There must be no Tamils there, now know?

How come?

Praba did not allow or register them to vote know!

I did not know that Maha responded and reflected politely and said it is good know.

Then you won’t have Tamil to fight in Apaya know?

That is good know?

That is not my point Sir even in Apaya we must continue our struggle for supremacy and without that no fun in Apaya know and no news coming out from there for me (from Apaya) to relate to the earthlings.

That is very selfish of yours.

I am human and Sri-Lankan Sir, I am entitled to some graphic action (horror) stories.

By the way have you got a vote?

No Sir for 35 years.

Part of the time I was abroad and the other time I did not furnish proper data.

It is not right know?

It is like this Sir there is de facto and de juro element.

De facto means you are already there and de juro means you are there in the list but you are away serving another electorate.

As a doctor I am blessed with to be de juro all the time.

But you are lying and you had been in this country with at least 3 presidents running the show?

But that was easy Sir.

I have two houses Sir.

When one Grama Sewaka (village headman) comes to register, I tell him my name is in the other electorate, if the other comes I tell him it is in the other electorate and it is as easy as that.

The officers have no way of communicating with each other and they are not allowed to do that anyway!

You are very clever and you will never go to hell in that case.

Is it so sure Sir.

Yes.

Then what about your citizenship?

I have a passport. I have ID card and I pay taxes to the hilt.

I am a true Sri-Lankan in spite of not having a vote.

How can you be so neutral?

It is not neutral Sir.

It is the survival trick.

Survival of the fittest.

If I support the government the opposition guys won’t come to get medicine from me.

If I support the opposition the government guys won’t come to me.

That’s very partisan people aren’t they?

Yes.

Why don’t you ask the people to follow your tradition.

I tried a bit but I failed.

They all are political animals in this country, beside I will be deprived of some entertainment, too.

Now that we have stopped the war we will not get patients to try our trade and suture wounds and repair bones etc.

.

Election violence is the surest way to get injuries both physical and mental.

How mental?

Unlike cricket we let India to win so that 2 billion Indian enjoyed but after elections both side of the divide go into mental mode (2M Mode) discovering how stupid they are.

Or I see.

But England beat India know?

England has to do that Sir.

Otherwise there will be no cricket but casinos and betting pools.

In any case it is English Game and it is a gentleman’s game and India is against DRS (Decision Reviewing System), too.

That is not good sport know?

That is the difference between Indian and Sri-Lankans, Sir.

We rig both elections and cricket.

But Indians rig only cricket and never elections.

Even if the politicians do not return the promises Indian do not blame them as long as if they win any game by hook or crook,.

The average Indian on the street is immune to politics but never to cricket.

That is why we let Indian win.

We are very good neighbours except the Indian politicians especially in the south who are good at harbouring terrorists in their own soil to win elections.

There is always equal an opposite reaction and mutual benefits.

We two nations will survive without the stupid politicians.

We like Indian and Tamil food.

Indians love visiting Ceylon and opening tourist hotels.

We will survive in spite of politicians.

I got to go any more questions.

One Sir.

We did a disservice to Tamils by winning the war isn’t it Sir.

What nonsense?

If they were under Praba none will have a vote and all will be debarred from entering the Hell by your definition.

Now they have elections in the North and East and at least 50% are voting and 50% will be going there for scrutiny.

I suppose so and I have no veto power in politics and that is a human game and we gods have no political affiliations.

In that case I will be coming to heaven.

Isn’t it?

I cannot tell you that Sir.

It is ethically wrong to forecast like economists in heaven but send me some dreams will you?

OK Sir.

Scoring Update on Ubuntu and Unity

I have downloaded Ubuntu LTS and Unity and have tested them on my old and relatively new IBM computers and hardly anything to write home except 3 new introduction to Unity. They are
1. Cloud support with (Ubuntu one) 2 GiB space.
2. Clean up utility
3. New desktop (already made some comments)

Total score for LTS is 915 and for Unity 1255 (300 points for new desktop) both well below.
Linux Mint score is 1235 and difference between Unity and Mint is negligible and Mint is more robust than Unity.
The relative increase of downloads of Mint at Distrowatch may be a reflection of this lack of outstanding difference.
The difference is only cosmetic at the expense of stability.
At least if they had introduced Sinhala capability I would have given another 100 points and the lack functionality for visually handicapped (at least ORCAS) is a glaring omission.

Now you have a choice either go for Debian proper at Debian Mint as alternative.

My prediction is Ubuntu is going to lose its fan base like what happened to Redhat when Fedora was thrust upon Linux addicts, like us.
Having said that I still support Ubuntu’s innovative approach and with touch screen and tablets coming it will make a serge in the customer base.
Till then Ubuntu fans Multiboot with at least 3 Linux distributions in one box.

With hard drives going to 500 GiB and cheap now what other option one has?

Mind you both CDs did not boot with my old IBM and there was loss of font functionality.

Debian the clear winner-The Gold for Light and Heavy Weight Championship

Now that the industrial action is over, we brought the Hero to Gyro (not giro and we could not be bought by money circulating on illegal hands or corruption) except perhaps few individual who had vested interests and wanted to be heroes at the expense of the general body politics of our action perpetuated by sheer needs and not aspirations (fell far short of aspirations of accountability, transparency, fairness).
These instant Heroes had unassailable lead and they had to be pulled down to base level and gyrate them on the correct path lest all of us would be heading for disaster.
We never had the political will to bring Heroes to Zeros but the vision to come to the base level we reached way back in 2008 and gyrate in correct orbit instead of asking for miracles which we will never achieve the way we sink into dirty tricks and manipulations by undesirables.

I hope senses will come to body politics of the country, unless of course the voters will bring the Heroes to Zeroes in double quick time at the correct gyroscopic orbit and time and they are not stupid or donkeys who carry burden.

We are of course in the minority in that context and what we can provide is wisdom if not vision.
We came to equilibrium position neither zero nor hero but a position of comfort from where we can gyrate to greater heights if correct recognition is extended.
Otherwise history will take us backward (like in cricket) instead of forward.

Debian

Coming to IT industry where there are commercial heroes but the clear winner which gyrate at the correct orbit is Debian.
It was no surprise.
Score of above 3000 and well above the Gold Standard of 2500 for the standard CD.
For the heavy weight category it is within the Gold Mark where no other distribution has all the components at hand with over 30,000 package well tested.
It has gParted which is around 100 MiB with partition and security features.
It has Blender, Scribus and Inkscape.
Only missing component was O.E.M. component.
It did not have a printed book but thanks to French and the English translation is due soon and available on line as open source.
It has all the versions from Mini to KDE to Server.
It has multi-language support including Sinhala.
It does not pretend to be a (commercial) hero but the wise counsel to all the other distributions which include Ubuntu and extending a hand to Linux Mint currently.
Additionally it is forging with FreeBSD too.
It is the clear winner.
If I said without my marking scheme everybody will say I am biased. Now it is vindicated and flame wars are not the necessity but a feature of Linux and its multi-faceted distributions..
Now I can say with or without bias it is the one that guides us and the Gyroscope for years to come.
If you need a solid, stable and secure enhanced Linux, there is only one and only one.
It is called Debian.
It is not for the lazy souls and it is the one who wants to dig a lot, sweat a bit and enjoy a lot of the hard labour.
Nothing is easy in the IT World.
One has to go into simple command line and give commanding orders till midnight commander sleeps like a sleeping beauty!

Finnix, the LiveCD for system administrators

Finnix is Genome / Linux Kernel 3 and only 102 MiB and fits a mini CD.
Below is a reproduction from Finnix Organization.
If I write about Linux Live CD that boots with windows X desktop only, I am doing an injustice to the Linux Developers, who make wonderful Little Utilities for system administrators.
Below is one of them, a CD that boots without a desktop window on a terminal (window) with 300 MiB of utilities.
Download and enjoy!
Thank you Guys and Girls of Finnix organization.

Finnix, the LiveCD for system administrators
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Finnix is a self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution (“LiveCD”) for system administrators, based on Debian. You can mount and manipulate hard drives and partitions, monitor networks, rebuild boot records, install other operating systems, and much more. Finnix includes the latest technology for system administrators, with Linux kernel 2.6, LVM2, encrypted partitions, etc. And above all, Finnix is small; currently the entire distribution is over 300MiB, but is dynamically compressed into a small bootable image. Finnix is not intended for the average desktop user, and does not include any desktops, productivity tools, or sound support, in order to keep distribution size low.

Ubuntu Fans, You have a way out!

With the coming of age of Ubuntu and the entry of the new fashion lady Unity, ardent Ubuntu fans should not be disappointed.

You have a way out.

Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support ) 10.04.3 is now available for download from Softpedia and Distrowatch and you should download it/them and update your systems.

If you want to be like me (I have not tried this yet) who has many distributions in one box except windows, you should try dual or ideally multi-boot several Linux distributions (my advice is Linux Mint or Kubuntu for Ubuntu fans) including PCLinux.

For a Linux guy or girl learning curve is almost flat and over time decide what he/she wants to use.

Alternatively wait for my future comments at parafox and asokaplus on all the Linux distributions I have downloaded and tested, recently.

New point scheme is devised to eliminate person bias and make it somewhat scientific (qualitative and quantitative analysis).

I may be bit slow since our industrial action is over and I will be busy getting new entrants to learn Academic English in addition to my core work.

When they come from the English Program (ad hog) hastily devised I will have an uphill task, making conditions right for them to understand the scientific messages not political, I have to dish out.

I will keep my promise in 100 days (one a day would do) or within three (3) month since I have downloaded all except Linux Mint and my hard disk is chockablocked.

In the mean time I have to promote Sinhala Linux too (Debian 6.0.2 plus+), too.

New Ubuntu Desktop Unity

I was never a Ubuntu fan and I took sometime before downloading Ubuntu and before that I read couple of web articles and if I had been Ubuntu fan, I can very well understand the logic, frustration and criticism of the loyal fans.
I have gone from Redhat to Mandrake to Suse to PCLinux and Mepis and know very well the pain I went through when Redhat dished us out to Fedora Community Project.
After Fedora 3, I gave up and that change in my attitude and experimenting with other distributions even though troublesome was a very good experience.
After all I gave up Microsoft and giving up a distribution was easy because I used to have at least 5 operating system including Win 98 and XP in my computer and switching and testing and falling back to most stable and useful distribution came second nature to me.
In addition it made me to migrate to Live CDs and over the past two years, I have been talking about almost all of them I have downloaded and tested. Writing about their virtues and sore points has become a habit and when I test I have no preconditions attached to the exercise.

No expectations at all.
Testing Ubuntu Unity (which I have in principles supported due to other reasons ) was no different and no strings attached.
I tested it with my old computer (old IBM Netvista) which was disaster by itself and it booted up with graphic images with no fonts.
I came across this problem with several new Linux distributions including PapugLinux, JULinux and Taylor Switch (KVM switch) and knew immediately to exit and boot it with my IBM Think Center and the subsequent experience was totally different and Unity booted up with a beautiful desktop which looked somewhat liked MeeGo (not that elegant) and getting round was a completely new desktop experience and I could not see any familiar features of Ubuntu.

My first need was the workspaces which I am so used to now without them I will have a heart attack.

With some fiddling I found 4 workspaces and I could open and exchange the programs from 1 to 4 (workspace).
Then I wanted to fill the other 2 workspaces and I could not.
I searched the applications but then I had to leave the workspace and that experience was a very bad one, now that I got used to FullMonty nice desktop arrangement.
Then I hit the web browser and went to distrowatch and looked at the latest downloads of Linux distribution and Ubuntu is now sandwich between Mint and PClinux which has climbed up to 3 from 7.
This was a pleasant surprise for me.
I used PCLinux as the gold standard of Live CDs and an arbitrary reference, coined for testing other Lice CDs.
I can understand the reaction of the Linux users but I have some sympathy for Ubuntu and hope their experiment will succeed.
It ought to since tablets are coming to the market thick and fast and all the looks are Ubuntu is ready with this new innovation.

I have decided to give 300 points (for innovation) of my scale which I am revising now with the latest trends in the super highway.
If not I have no way of promoting Ubuntu as a general purpose Linux distribution.
Switching to LibreOffice was good.
It will be a rough passage for them knowing very well we shift our allegiance when our needs are not satisfied by the latest distribution.
That is what I did with Fedora.
Now after 10 more distribution I have switched back to Fedora since it is one of the few that support Sinhala Unicode.
I hope Ubuntu Unity do the same of supporting Sinhala and then I will be promoting Unity with some new found vigour.

Criteria for Defining Suitability of Linux Distributions

With Gnome 3 and Kernel 3 in the horizon and tablet in the market and Ubuntu making a radical changes to desktop with Unity already arrived, I have decided to award a point scheme for all the distributions active now and write an update for all the Linux distributions I have downloaded so far.
That means moment I post an update on a distribution, my old writing here probably become obsolete and would be taken out without any notice.
I would be grateful if you post any errors of omission or commission on those post already here.
That means future posting will be slow to come and try my best avoid any errors.

I will keep the point scheme close to my heart and won’t publish them here but on a future date if necessary may do that for completeness sake.
Points are given on quantitative as well as qualitative reasons.
Lowest mark is 10 and the highest mark is 300.
For an example I give 10 marks if it is only in French and 100 marks for multi-language cababililty.
I will give 300 marks if it includes Sinhala and multi-language capability.

Similarly Ubuntu Unity gets 300 for its innovative approach and as a teaser for loyal fans who hate the new approach. I would include the total points for the old version as well as new version.
This analysis is with desktop users in mind and server editions won’t get any additional mark but I would state that server is avable.
I will start with Linux Mint, since it has O.E.M version, codecs version with minimal multimedia support and almost pure without any software infringements and full version with additional software.
It is a complete desktop and laptop friendly and currently is the top most downloaded at distrowatch.
It has both 32 and 64 bit versions.
I am going to stop stating that PCLinux is the Gold Standard of live CD to eliminate my personnel bias on that distribution but have a Hypothetical Gold Standard defined by criteria below and with a point award of 2500.
So anything that approaches 2200 for CD version and above is potential Gold Standard and you are free to try it.
Nobody will get 100% assuming that no distribution has reached its peak and would be trying to achieve that gold wit constant improvement an bug fixes.

For DVD the point award is 3500 points and anything that tops 3000 is a good value with 90% to 95% of all software.
I am a believer that “small is beautiful” and would figure out a way to award points and my guess is Puppy will come on top but there are equally good small utilities like SliTaz, 4MLinux, gParted and pMagic.
You are welcome to critically analyze my future writing with feedback but there is no attempt to compare with Microsoft and Apple Mac and in the next 5 to 10 years Linux will be way ahead of both of these distributions and I am not the one who need any pep commercial talks. In this period of course Linux guys and girls have to make 1000 and 1000 of tiny games and blockbuster games to invade the market in style.
They are already there on mobile phones and they have to mature with the hardware specially tablets in mind.

Criteria
A. Use
1. Live CD installable
2. Light Weight
3. Mini to LXDE to Standard

B. Internet
4. Easy Access to Internet
5. Automatically Configure Internet
6. Browser (ideally FireFox) Capability
7. Other browsers- 5 for each additional browser
8. Email Capability-Thunderbird
9. Google gadgets but not essential
10. Torrent Down Loader
11. Skype or alternative
12. Cloud-Dropbox
13. Cloud Other

C. Productivity
14.Office Package -Abiword
15.Office Package -Other Open office
16.Office Package -PDF Reader
17. Scribus
18. CD burner (ideally K3B-50)
19. CD burner (10 others)
20. LightScribe/LaCie (100)

D.Graphic
21. GIMP
22. Blender
23. Inkscape
24. Digicam
25. Tuxpaint
26. Special Graphics
27. Others

E. Audio
28. Mixer
29.Alsa
30. Others

F. Video
31. Imagination
32. VLC Player
33. Miro Internet TV
34. Cheese
35. TV Card
36. Others
37. Media Players including ability play itunes and divx

G. Essential Utilities
38. Stable Grub Configuration
39. Partitioning tool is essential(ideally Gparted)
40.Ability to clean up the temporary file at boot up
41. Updates and Package management

H. Archiving
42. Ark
43. File Roller

I. For Children
44. Light Weight Games
45. Children Version (150)
46. Gcompris

J. Subjective
47. Reliability (most of them are)
48. Speed at start up (most of them are slow except YOPER)
49. Quick installation
50. Portability
51. Type of Desktops (Genome/KDE)
52. Down loader that start from where one has left / stopped earlier
53. On line updates
54. Infrequent Cycles of Change
55. Downloads available for Libre Office,Open office, Skype (25 for each)
56.Speed at Start Up

K. Linux Fundamentals
57. Separate administrator in addition to normal user
58. Reliable Package Manager
59. Multi-Language in addition to English (5 for each Language-Total-100)
60. Sinhala Language Capability (200)
61. Terminal

L. USB Boot Up
62. UnetBootIn
63. USB Creator
64. Live CD creator

M. Emulators
65. DOS
66. Wine
67. Oracle VM
68. Apple Emulation

N. Games
69. Light Weight
70. Advanced Games (25 for Each)

O. Educational
71. Google Map
72. Tux Guitar
73. Tux Maths

P. Special and Development Utilities
74. Gambase
75. Web editor
76. PHP Admin
77. Scientific packages like statistics

Q. Access to Information
78. Home Web Site
79. Essential information including installation password etc
80. The facility for registration and writing reviews

R. Special Attributes
81. Less than 50 MiB
82. Less than 200 MiB
83. Less then 500 MiB
84. Innovative approach GOBO and YOPER

S. Finances and Printing
85. Gnumeric
86. GnuCash
87. Printing

S. Very Special
88. Religion
89. Language
90. Kernel Version
91. Version Number
92. New Desktop Type
93. Innovative Changes
94. 32 bits only
95. Both 32 and 64 bits
96.O.E.M.Version
97. ORCAS-Visually Handicapped
98
99
100