Knoppix - Good for the Soul!

[JohnnyBra]

Alrite, I am by-and-far NOT a Linux Guy. I've always preached the wonders of M$ and the evils of this thing called Linux.

Back in college, my best friend was a Linux Nut.. (of course, he just did it because he wanted to be different.. he really sucked at the OS).

Anyways, I overheard a conversation in chat a few weeks ago about Knoppix. A bootable CD version of Linux that requires 0 installation on your HD and gives you a full taste of Linux.

I was skeptical.. Last time I installed a Linux Distro was RedHat 5, and could never get the networking portion to work. But, it only cost a blank CD to download and try, so why not?

I downloaded and burnt the CD at work, but didn't have time to play with it here. So I took the disc home with me for a test. Reboot my desktop?? No way! So I pulled out my laptop and stuck it in. I figured "Heck, if it's going to try some autodetect wizardy, let's see it find all the obscure Laptop drivers !!".


I can only imagine the pure shock on my face when 2 minutes later, my laptop was fully booted into a KDE XWindows sesssion with full sound, 1024x768 video, and internet working fully! I could see 1000 different uses for a tool like this. It's a Instant OS!!! Of course, the system has to have a bit of ram to run. My laptop is a 2ghz w/ 256 megs of ram, so it had no problem. Although that much CD-Rom activity on a laptop will drain the batteries quick!!!!!!

So :thumbsup: to Knoppix from a non-linux user.. I've now downloaded RedHat 9 and am considering trying a dual-boot on my home machine ^-^;

[mlangdn]

Go for it!
But IMHO, use a second drive to dual-boot with. I used a 3 gig drive for my first dual-boot, and am now using a bigger one. Soon, I hope to acquire a 120 gig or better drive and will partition and load more than two OS's for a multi-boot system.
Lilo in Linux will see them all and give me a bunch of choices for playing around. I love to play - someday, I hope I can even learn something from all this!

:beer: :beer:

[Cool Canuck]

Anything but RedHat. But what do I know. Ask Grogan. :D

[Jizzy]

Yup...I'm slowly getting to like Linux more and more. Kind of started the same way as JBra, actually.

[Grogan]

Redhat is a good one for learning if you want to learn how to use Linux as a server. It would probably even be my first choice for a server that I don't have physical access to.

For someone who wants to compile their own software and customize their system, it's not the best of distros to play with though. They change a lot of things and there are considerable "gotchas".

[BobGuy]

People are so used to the idea that everything is either expensive, or it's crap.

:thumbsup: JohnnyBra for giving Knoppix a try.

[Walden]

I've used Knoppix before when my windows took a hard crash, and i couldn't get it back... Knoppix to the rescue!!!
Kinda freaky though, think about it
Someone who has a copy of Knoppix can walk into any office building and have access to everything...no?

Grogan, what do you use in your every day goings on? I use redhat 9, BUT i am learning how to use FreeBSD4.8...*woo-hoo*. I downloaded Gentoo 1.4, holy crap i can't even install the damn thing. Soon i will try my hand at Vector, Slack, and College

I just want to get a feel for Linux, and BSD

[Grogan]

I use Slackware on my PCs.

[Tomo]

Hehe, glad you overheard mine and Slo's conversation :)

[Three D]

I gotta couple Knoppix cd's around. They are really handy to get you outta jams.

[Zema Bus]

Wow! I had to give this a try. It's amazing to have an OS up and running straight off a CD! I'm browsing the forums now with it. I know someone at work who has XP with major virus problems that won't let her do anything. I think I'll give her one of these CD's Monday. Only thing is she's on dialup with probably a WinModem.

[SloHands]

I have been a staunch supporter of OpenSource for sometime now, but am not a competent user of Linux. But then, I'm not all that when using a Windows system either.

What is important is to expand abilities when dealing with computers. In that vein, Linux can offer a different view as to how much more stable and usable a computer experience can be.

Knoppix offers to bridge the gap for Windows users in a format that is, for all practical purposes, non-intrusive to that system you are now using.

My only suggestion would be that the computer you use have at least 128 MB of RAM available. Will it work on a less RAM? Yes! It will! But not as effectively. I have 256 megs on my machine and it is sooooooooo fast. Including the access to the 'Net, once established.

Want to get the straight info for a 'newbie' on Knoppix Linux? Use this LINK! (http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/KnoppixForNewbies)

Enjoy! :D

I am!

[phicks]

Well since this was suppose to be so easy i had to give it a try too. Feck just put my cd in and here i be and didnt have to do anything. Using it right now so it cant be too hard. :D

[Walden]

Woo-hoo!!!:thewave:

[phicks]

Originally posted by Walden
Woo-hoo!!!:thewave:

Thats what i said too. It dont like my nic on one of my puters though so no net on that one, but the other i tried it on is fine. :D

[whipat]

Patty..where did you get it..I'm missing something

[phicks]

Originally posted by whipat
Patty..where did you get it..I'm missing something

Right here Pat http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=44

Took a long time to download even on dsl and then i burned it to a blank cd. :)

[whipat]

thank you , my dear..:)

[whipat]

tks for the link, SloHands:)

[BobGuy]

Originally posted by phicks
Well since this was suppose to be so easy i had to give it a try too. Feck just put my cd in and here i be and didnt have to do anything. Using it right now so it cant be too hard. :D

Here is a "Posted on Tuesday, December 17, 2002 by Marcel Gagné" artical about knoppix.

It has a couple of good tips in it.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6519

[phicks]

Thanks BobGuy. :beer:

[rgarcia]

Originally posted by phicks
Right here Pat http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=44

Took a long time to download even on dsl and then i burned it to a blank cd. :)

You can also get it from links in their home page at http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.htm, another good way is to grab it via BitTorrent from their tracker at http://torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de:6969/.

Depending on the time, number of people online, this could be very slow, medium to very fast. I got my 700 MB download in 36 minutes :) - can't bet that with FTP or web.

Received it a couple days ago, and left it seeding ever since. A pesky Microsoft tracker is always trying to connect to me, back every twenty minutes or so.

Maybe they need a better OS for their web servers.... ;)

Ciao!

[rgarcia]

Originally posted by Grogan
I use Slackware on my PCs.

Grogan, what's your opinion about Suse?

(Their hardware detection was impressive to me, picked up things that Mandrake nver saw, gave me OpenGL instantly on an ATI card, all I had to do was enable a check box.)

Cheers!

[Case]

AAAGGGGHHHHH!!!!

I'm JACKED!

I got KNOPPIX!

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

This is so cool - booted one of the machines at work, just happened to be a guy in here with an excel file on a floppy that had some bad sectors - couldn't do shit in winblows, so I tried reading it from the Linux distro, and guess what? We were able to pull some of his information off - not all, but some. Linux Rocks!


If you hadn't guessed, I'm pretty excited about this - I've been trying to download it for it seems like a month now . . .

[whipat]

well, if you would have said something, we could have sent it to you! tsk, tsk...I'm jacked up about it, too... it lets me mess around until I can afford a bigger hard drive for Mandrake..