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Knoppix 3.2

Started by iansl, May 23, 2003, 14:35 hrs

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Chandler

OK, I'll keep this short since I'm meant to be revising! :-[

Knoppix is a Linux distribution which runs totally from a single bootable CD-ROM.  It is based on Debian, which is one of the most stable Linux distributions but also the hardest to install (BTW, I've still not got it working).

What this means is that you get a complete operating system, which runs from CD.  Very useful for recovering a damaged system.

The installation problems do not appear with Knoppix though.  Simply put the CD in at bootup, wait a couple of minutes and you're in Knoppix with the KDE desktop.  There is nothing to configure and it even mounts your hard drive as read-only, so you can access your hard drive but not write to it (so no risk of damaging it).  It can even mount NTFS drives!

There's a whole range of (free) software on the CD, including a superb Office suite.  There is too much to list here, but you will be shocked by just how much can fit onto a single CD when you try it out!

I tried it on my laptop (Uniwill N340S8, 1.2GHz, SiS630, 256MB RAM) and it detected everything fine, even the LCD panel and integrated sound were working (the sound barely works in XP!)

Since it had mounted my XP partition, I tried playing some music videos which I had.  They played perfectly and there were lots of options for configuring playback.  There even seems to be an MPEG-II decoder built in!

Then there's a lot of games, maths programs, science programs, utilities and lots and lots of other things.  I poast later on with more details.

Oh dear, I guess it isn't that short after all!

Chandler

Right one more exam left in a couple of days, so I'm taking a night off. :)

One thing that I thought might have been an issue with a CD-based operating system is speed, but even on my 24x laptop drive programs start up reasonably fast.

Stability has been great for the space of time that I used it, makes me really want to get Debian working (it worked with Gnome, just KDE wouldn't start).

Chandler

#2
OK, it's 2:30 in the morning and I couldn't get to sleep so I decided to do a hard disk installation of Knoppix.  It worked first time!  No problems whatsoever.  In fact I am typing this now from Mozilla browser within Knoppix (Konqueror wouldn't stay logged in here) and everything works as expected.

The thing is, installation took a mere 30 minutes, and that was including the time it took for me to downsize XP's NTFS partition to make some space.

It's Debian roots are very apparent when you do a hard disk installation, in fact the initial logon screens are 100% Debian.  Once logged in, you are guided through step-by-step to configure the user interface (it's in german, but it's graphical so it's still easy to understand).  Once the wizard is completed, assuming you select English, then everything will be in English!

Right now the only thing I miss from Windows XP is ClearType!  LCDs are way too sharp!

UPDATE!:  No wait, there's an option for sub-pixel blending (=ClearType).  Is there anything this operating system can't do? ;)

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