I stumbled across a light, but thoughtful post by David Williams over at ITWire. Williams recounts a situation where he used a Linux distribution on a liveCD (Ubuntu in this case, but there are countless others that can do the job) to rescue files from an ancient machine that was fading fast.

Using live Linux distributions to rescue and reset machines is nothing new, of course. Take KNOPPIX, for instance. The Debian based distribution got its (well-deserved) name by developing a user-friendly way to carry around a robust Linux desktop. While that's a great use for a live Linux distro, nothing garners appreciation from tech users of all walks of life quite like using a live distribution to rescue data from an errant machine does.