Yes. Since CDlinux 0.9.0, you can boot from the ISO Image directly without actually burning it.

CDlinux 0.9.0 and later support boot directly from the ISO image via GRUB4DOS. GRUB4DOS is an universal boot loader based on GNU GRUB. It can boot off DOS/LINUX, or via Windows boot manager/syslinux/lilo, or from MBR/CD. It also has builtin BIOS disk emulation, ATAPI CDROM driver, etc.

Recent versions of GRUB4DOS has a feature called “ISO emulation”. You can use the version of GRUB4DOS shipped with CDlinux. Here is an example menu.lst entry to boot the CDlinux ISO:

#========================= begin =========================#
title GNU/CDlinux (ISO emulation)
  map --mem (hd0,0)/boot/CDlinux/CDL.iso (hd32)
  map --hook
  map --status
  kernel (hd32)/boot/CDlinux/bzImage quiet CDL_IMG=CDL.iso
  initrd (hd32)/boot/CDlinux/initrd
  map --unhook
  boot
#========================== end ==========================#

You should change this example according to your own situation.

This will load the whole CDlinux ISO image into the RAM. It may take a few seconds or tens of minutes, depending on your own configuration. Especially when you are booting from a USB device and having a buggy BIOS, this may take hours!

Since this will load the whole CDlinux image into the RAM, obviously your RAM size should be larger than the ISO.

In this mode (booting from the ISO image directly), your settings/changes won't be saved.

For more information on using GRUB4DOS, please refer to its excellent documents. There are many examples and detailed explanation.