= User Manual

[partintro]
.What good is software if nobody uses it?
--
BDisk was ultimately designed to make your life easier. "Why would I possibly need yet another LiveCD/LiveUSB?" Well, that's sort of the point- by customizing a live distribution of GNU/Linux to _your_ particular needs/desires/whimsy, you can do away with the multiple other images you keep around. It's designed to let you create a fully customized distribution.

Using BDisk, you can:

* Install GNU/Linux (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/installation_guide[Arch^], https://watchmysys.com/blog/2015/02/installing-centos-7-with-a-chroot/[CentOS^], https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/apds03.html.en[Debian^], https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64#Installing_Gentoo[Gentoo^], https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/installation-guide/powerpc/apds04.html[Ubuntu^]...). BDisk may be Arch-based, but many if not most other distros offer ways to install from any GNU/Linux live distribution.
* Perform disk maintenance (https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID_setup[mdadm^], fdisk/http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/[gdisk^], http://gparted.org/[gparted^], https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/StorCLI[storcli^], etc.). Need to replace that disk in your RAID and you don't have hotswap? Not a problem!
* Rescue, recover, wipe (http://www.sleuthkit.org/sleuthkit/[scalpel^], http://www.andybev.com/index.php/Nwipe[nwipe^], http://foremost.sourceforge.net/[foremost^], etc.). Chances are this is why you booted a live distro in the first place, yes?
* Boot over the Internet (or LAN). Burning a new image to CD/DVD/USB is a pain. BDisk has built-in support for http://ipxe.org/[iPXE^] (and traditional PXE setups). Update the filesystem image once, deploy it everywhere.
* And much, much more.
** Seriously.

This manual will give you the information you need to build your very own live GNU/Linux distribution.
--

include::user/GETTING_STARTED.adoc[]
include::user/IMPORTANT_CONCEPTS.adoc[]
include::user/PROJECT_LAYOUT.adoc[]
include::user/BUILDINI.adoc[]
include::user/ADVANCED.adoc[]

