PCLinuxOS is distributed as a Live CD, which can also be installed to a local hard disk drive. When used as a Live CD, it can work with a USB flash drive, where the user's configuration and personal data are saved. The entire CD can be copied to and run from memory (if the system has sufficient RAM) increasing speed. PCLinuxOS uses the Advanced Packaging Tool (or APT), a package management system (originally from the Debian distribution), together with Synaptic Package Manager, a GUI front end to APT, in order to add, remove or update packages. If there is enough memory on the machine and a network connection, the Live CD can update packages.