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Blind + Linux = BLINUX. This is the best solution in the long run and it doesn't cost anything, unlike solutions from Microsoft and other proprietary software. I wish you the best luck. The command-line interface is ideal for blind users.

Interestingly (but a tad OT) is that nethack can be configured for blind users as well. All work and no play makes Johnny a dully boy. Other games for the blind would probably include the many, many MUDs out there.

Not only MUDs but also future MMORPG games from The WorldForge Project where people will be able to play with each other on-line on the same servers and in the same worlds using different clients, including 2D isometric, full-3D OpenGL and entirely text-based ones. Not to even mention that thanks to Emacspeak a blind person can play even Tetris. This is not off-topic at all.

And to demonstrate how interfaces such as Emacspeak are impressive and important not only for blind users but for the general public, I am planning to develop a fully audio-desktop based car audio system, most probably using Oralux GNU/Linux, a Knoppix customization with Emacspeak user interface, with emphasis on making as much information and entertainment (music, games, WWW, etc.) accessible to the driver with absolutely no display distracting from the road, which in my opinion is the very direction every car manufacturer should follow to make cars safer. Projects like Emacspeak, BLinux and Oralux freely available make such a system trivial to build using an old laptop hidden somewhere under the seat, some cables and a simple input system, with almost no custom software needed.

I have been thinking about it since I first saw the most stupid idea in the history of car audio systems, i.e. text display of local traffic-related messages in real time. I thought that it is utterly moronic, since such messages should be spoken and in fact even the number of CD track I change to should be spoken instead of displayed in a place I have to look instead of focusing on the road. Hence the idea of full audio car audio system.

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

Boot it, love it.

If you just need to demonstrate how nice fonts can look in a linux desktop, then you have to most definitely demo Knoppix. This is one of the reasons why Knoppix was developed -- to show off linux with minimal effort. I'm surprised no previous comments about knoppix have been moderated up.

from my personal experience (and my personal tastes), i'm of the opinion that Mandrake is a good starting distro (i think it's a good choice). installation is easy and everything is generally set up pretty well automatically.

but if you want to learn more about the way linux works, i think Gentoo is a better option, since you basically have to set up and configure all the system services and software yourself, mostly manually. (but i love not having to touch the rc scripts.)

the reason i suggest Gentoo is because of the simple fact that the Gentoo Handbook goes into all the detail you need, holding your hand each step of the way in setting it up, and bringing it to a workable level.

what brought me to Gentoo was that i heard about the fact that you can custom-compile all the software you use. that's even what everyone assosciates with Gentoo. but what people seem to forget (or humorously omit - or maybe just not even know) is that so much of Gentoo's setup is automated. you type "emerge" and the name of your program, and it configures and compiles the program for you. you don't even have to think about it.

and with such wide choices in software, including ebuilds for some commercial games, it's really not that difficult to get started using.

and with the "compile it yourself" mantra that pervades the community, people forget that there are quite often precompiled binaries available for most software and a generic kernel configurator that makes it quick and easy to get started.

if you're interested with playing with linux now, but don't want to format any hard drives, don't forget there are several live CD distros, suck as Knoppix that will let you "test the waters," so-to-speak.

give it a whirl. you won't be sorry.

It is offered on the official bittorrent links, so I'm guessing they want to seed some bittorrents and mirrors before announcing to the world and having hordes of people download it. If they release it by bittorrent, the bandwidth usage is spread across all the users, and once the beginning /. (etc.) demand is satisfied, they can let the rest of the people use ftp. It's a nice way of combatting the /. effect, and the flood to the mirrors that result from it.

There's a forum post on official forums, and the Official torrent link also has the 3.6.

I find it odd that version 3.6 is not mentioned on the Official Knoppix site, or on Knoppix.net.

Can someone explain that? Is 3.6 a trojan?

Hmmmmm, let's see...

1. RPM. Read the Linux Standards Base documents?
2. Anaconda, the install/setup program.
3. Kudzu, the hardware detection system used by Knoppix and others.

I could continue, but I think those three on their own more than justify the company's existence, if nothing else.
While I will admit that as an overall distribution I was not overly enamoured of Red Hat 9, RH have contributed solutions to a number of vexing problems for us, and also carry on a very active development effort at sources.redhat.com.
I'm also detecting some of the usual commie whining (No, I don't think OSS is communist, but this is) about a company that's daring to actually make a large profit here...as if every company purely by virtue of its existence had to inevitably emulate Microsoft's bad behaviour. However, it might behoove you next time to be a little more sure of your facts before you start bitching.

Why nor use a Linux boot CD like Knoppix or SuSe? If you don't have a CD-ROM, a hard drive isn't that expensive. I understand the power savings part, but you might only be able to do so much with a non bootable USB port.

Go to a meeting of your local Linux User Group Someone will burn you a distro (or at least a copy of Knoppix, which is enough to get you downloading) for free.

I'd recommend building yourself a simple "run from RAM" setup using Knoppix (or something similar), and install it on a CompactFlash card.
CompactFlash has several data transfer modes, one of which is essentially IDE.
Yes, you can take one of those ultra-cheap PCMCIA->CompactFlash adaptors, rip it apart and solder on a parallel IDE cable (google for it, it's common), and plug it right into your motherboard. I just googled for it myself, and found that CompactFlash-IDE adaptors are now being sold, so you don't even need to get your soldering iron out.

Now you've eliminated the hard drive, so you don't have to worry about the various issues associated with them, and you've eliminated the issue with powering off the device while it's running.

Echoing some of the other posts here: It depends what you want to get out of Linux.

If you "just want to use it" (i.e. you just want a nice desktop system that isn't proprietary, or just want to try out some Linux programs) I'd recommend (roughly in order of preference):

1. Knoppix - don't even need to 'install' to try it out
2. SuSe (Or is it SuSE? Or Suse? I can never keep it straight). They've always seemed like a reasonably decent distribution, and now with Novell's apparently-earnest-and-sincere backing, I tend to think of them as "the new Red Hat" (in that they'll be a 'default' distribution in the near future and thus useful to be familiar with).
3. Mandrake - I personally didn't much care for what I saw of Mandrake, but many people do, and this one is often suggested for "newbies".

If, on the other hand, you actually want to learn Linux:

1. Slackware - my personal favorite. It seems to be the most "generic-Unix-like" in general style. I think that although it's fairly "manual" in terms of setup, it's not difficult. But that's my opinion. It's probably the easiest-to-install-and-configure "nerd" distribution.
2. Gentoo - takes forever to install initially, because it actually compiles (most) of itself directly from source. You can configure it for the best compiler optimizations for your hardware and have, theoretically, the fastest-possible system. Maybe a bit of a steep learning curve to start with though - although if you're up for it, it may be worth it.
3. Debian - Possibly one of the most obtuse installation procedures (at least, last time I tried it), but once installed it's amazingly easy to maintain. ("apt-get" really is as cool as they say it is). Debian's one of the "big" famous distributions also, so if you find yourself working with a wide variety of Linux boxen, it's good to be at least a little familiar with it. Debian's other downside (apart from the initial install procedure) from my perspective is that by default their software versions tend to be quite old, though you can get around this by reconfiguring your system to pull updates from the "unstable" and "testing" branches.

Those would be my suggestions, anyway.

I have to agree with n1ywb. Try Knoppix. It's a wonderful live distro and it's great for beginners. It'll help you learn the basics and then when your comfortable with it, you can install it to disk or move on to a more powerful distro. Fedora would be a good second step.

• Knoppix
• Fedora

Things are much better for me more recently though, now I have built X.Org R6.7 and my Radeon Mobility 9700 is all good to go too.

If you don't want to build your own kernels, you needn't do that either. The latest Knoppix includes an option to boot a 2.6 kernel (type "knopix26" at the boot prompt), and I have seen success stories discussed on the Debian Laptop mailing list as well, using the standard Debian 2.6 kernel.

With the Debian kernel you have to add "acpi=on" to the Grub/Lilo command line, but that isn't needed for Knoppix.

Thanks! Here's my list. The stuff I carry is usually for cases where I can't access the network or hardware. If the machine sees the network, I've got it made.

I mentioned these two, but here are details.

chntpw, reset NT/2k/XP passwords with the full bootable floppy version.

Bart's network boot disk built into a 2.88 meg image allows a huge load of network drivers, and with a copy of ghost I don't ever have to mess with building boot floppies for ghost again. I also included basic DOS utilities for manipulating the HDD and testing.

Bootable CDs with floppy images can be useful, and Bart provides a handy utility for building them. Put a disk image of chntpw on a bootable CD with other goodies per instructions at Bart's site.

I also carry Knoppix or perhaps a nice Bootable Business Card with lots of network drivers. With read-only NTFS access and networking, I've stripped data off of drives I couldn't even access for a fresh NT/2k install. Pour it across the network, and you're a hero. Also good for a slow clone with dd, or an emergency Remote Desktop Client. If you pick a livecd with a nice recent version of kparted, you can resize live NTFS partitions (I used SystemRescueCD). I've needed to do this more often than I'd have expected. Knoppix's NTFS tools were less useful at the time.



I'm looking forward to using the Captive NTFS drivers, but that seems less neccessary with one more set of tools from Bart's site, the bootable XP/2000 pre-execution environment in BartPE. These allow full access to NTFS, as well as providing an environment you can run Adaware and other Windows tools from. One of these made my day last week. It's dog slow to boot, but running Adaware or other utils (chkdsk, AV, undelete), from NOT the boot drive is great.

If you mean just the original installation, download the ISOs (this one's Red Hat Fedora, but you can Google for another) using bittorrent (I use Azureus). I believe that the Knoppix Live CD distro has its own installer.

Its just want youre looking for. Just insert the CD when your computer boots, then in just 1 minute you have a complete desktop, surfing the web, office suite, music player, GAMES, graphics software and even development tools all ready to go!

Try knoppix today, you won't be disappointed!

Linux already has something like this (minus the cache on demand) in the form of Knoppix + Klik
All the files are stored in a single directory under your home directory which can be on a USB drive or anything. It also works with a hard-drive install of Knoppix.

FYI, SuSE produces Knoppix-like bootable CD called "SUSE LINUX for i386 Live-Eval". I revieved a copy via a magazine. It is kinda slow and not the best for using from the CD-ROM, but it provides a good intro and demo of SuSE Linux without having to install it to your hard drive.

Notes: I recommend that you try it if you have enough memory - 256MB isn't enough,but 512MB or 768MB should work well (since it has to be loaded into RAM with no HDD install). I perfer Fedora Core 1, but my advice should give you an easy way to try SuSE.

No, it's important to have distros like knoppix around for people like your Dad whom you want to try to have test-drive Linux.

I'm sure mandrake is a very nice OS (I haven't tried it), but when I think of what I'd use to introduce someone to Linux, I always think of Knoppix.

Now what I'd really like to see is a distribution called BeginnerLinux or something along those lines, maybe based off of one of the big distros, that works as a LiveCD and is specifically tailored to giving the new user a comprehensive walkthrough of Linux, from apps to everything under the hood, and then shows them how to move to a full blown distro.

As one example of many, have you ever tried Knoppix?

If you consider to run Linux on your new laptop, you may check Linux-On-Laptops or TuxMobil - Linux on laptops, PDAs and mobile phones first. If you can not get the appropriate information there, you may take a Knoppix Linux CD to check the Linux compatibility. Just ask the salesman whether you may boot from the CD before buying.

I am so ready for this release to be posted for download! I check knopper.net and the torrent tracker every day hoping to see it ready for the masses, but no luck thus far. Looks like it's on hold for the general public until Cebit is over. If anyone has information on when it will be available to the rest of us, please let us know.

this is the same Cebit fair where knoppix announces/showcases their 3.4 release (Kernel 2.6 included in the bootCD).

Boot Knoppix too and pull anything you desire from ANY M$ formatted drive.
NTFS, FAT, whatever...

I NEVER make a service call without a Knoppix CD with me..

1. Use kino to do the video editing, and output/export (i.e. save as) an MPEG-2 (DVD format). To get this to work you will most likely need Mplayer installed because you'll need the mplex commandline tool to "multiplex" your audio and video files. Some like to use transcode, but I like Mplayer much better. Split the MPEG into multiple MPEGs if you want to have different chapters -- the best way to do this is to use a commandline tool called mpgtx. Or just save different MPEGs from kino. BTW, if you need to get video footage to edit in the first place then use dvgrab to get video from your DV camcorder -- it should be a part of the kino suite of tools, but if it's not, get it from one of the pages in kino.
2. Once you've gotten your MPEGs all created, now you can author. I use dvdauthor. What you have to first do is create a XML text file to list the MPEGs you want to burn into the DVD. And example of such a file is found here. The easiest method is to create a new chapter for each MPEG file. Then you run dvdauthor like so:

   dvdauthor -o DVDdir -x xml-filename

   DVDdir is the name of the output you want -- name doesn't really matter; xml-filename is the name of the text file you created.
3. DVDdir will be a directory from which you then need to create a video ISO. You need the commandline tool mkisofs. Example is:

   mkisofs -dvd-video -o fileoutput.img DVDdir

4. Now you just need to burn fileoutput.img with your DVD recorder. I use dvdrecord (yes, it's a commandline tool):

   dvdrecord -v -eject speed=4 dev=0,0,0 -dao fileoutput.img

I love using Knoppix version 3.2 on my desktop PC's from time to time, and I have Red Hat installed on an old spare machine so I can learn on it. But I am a hardcore gamer, so Linux just is not practical for me to put on my two fastest machines. And I do web development also, and need ot use all of the Macromedia MX Suite, as well as a nice stable version of Photoshop. As soon as Linux becomes easily compatible with all Windows based games, and the above mentioned programs are readily available and easily configurable, I will make the switch completely.

I think what holds back a lot of computer users from switching to Linux is the gaming issue.

Your comment gives the mistaken impression that OSS is somehow destined to always be behind proprietary software, as far as innovation and technical superiority is concerned. Microsoft and SCO love that notion, but unfortunately for them, it's not true. OSS is overtaking proprietary software in many areas, and it's reasonable to expect this trend to continue.

Here are just some of many examples of innovative, open-source software:

Test the waters with a live CD like Morphix or Knoppix. If your hardware gets detected well and things just work, install it to your hard drive.

My experience with SuSE was that hardware setup was a dream. I still miss YaST. Dependency hell drove me away. Apparently APT for RPM is quite good at resolving dependencies too. I just found that with Debian software installation is painless (using Synaptic or Aptitude as a frontend for APT) and things just work (once the hardware is configured - that's where Knoppix/Morphix come in).

Debian's "testing" distribution (currently Sarge) is really quite stable. The bugs get worked out in Sid (unstable), but the software is still quite recent (unlike Woody/stable). I found dealing with software installations on other systems painful compared with Debian. Everything I need is in the package repository, so apt-get/aptitude/synaptic does everything for me.

When I upgraded from kernel 2.4.22-xfs (that came with Knoppix) to 2.4.24 (standard debian kernel) it was that simple. Two commands and a reboot and it was running. There's a setting in some config file that will run update-grub for me, but I was too lazy to make the change.

Oh, I also had to recompile my nVidia video driver, but NV makes that so easy to do. Debian has some package for it. I should get around to trying it some day.

(Knoppix.net seems to be down right now - try the original site. It's not as easy to navigate, but the ISO is available there.

andy

I gather that, given enough time, most /.ers could write working binaries with nothing but a pencil, some paper, and a case of Jolt cola, but I guess this is the place for my first post: an old thread where my almost-complete ignorance works in my favor. Mod me redundant, but if there are any other newbies reading this, let me second NtroP's recommendation of Arklinux.

Other than Knoppix, ARKlinux is the only distro I've ever tried*. It has installed smoothly on both of my machines (a Compaq laptop and a home-baked system built around a 1.2G Athlon), using an interface that makes installation easy for newbs. It can either be installed by itself (be careful - this option overwrites your drives), or it can be installed parallel to an existing OS using unpartitioned disk space (it co-exists with Win98 nicely on my machine) or space that it clears for itself (if I'm understanding correctly, and I'm really not a reliable source). It's still in Alpha stages, so I wouldn't recommend trying to put it on the machine that has the only existing copy of your almost-finished doctoral thesis, but it's easy enough and stable enough that I've switched to it completely as my home OS.

If you're a newb looking to get your feet wet, have the obligatory one-night stand with Knoppix and then give Ark a try. YMMV, but I have nothing but good things to say about it (and I am a reliable source by virtue of my cluelessness).

The Dalai Llama

* Ok, there was that time I tried to use BasicLinux on a 286 laptop and learned the hard way that, unlike Windows, anything saved in the "temp" directory goes away when you cut the power. That doesn't count.

A low-cost alternative is a bootable copy of Knoppix, escpecially usefull if equipped with a virus scanner - like
http://www.linuxforum.com/linux_wallpapers_full/ 93.php>Knopicillin - sorry no ISO Image found - it was once in the C'T magazine...

Debian is designed to be multi-architecture, but KNOPPIX is targeted only at i386 as far as I know.

Basically, KNOPPIX is a slightly preconfigured Debian system that is cp -a'ed into a cloop filesystem and then a custom init script sets it all up during boot. I think cloop was created for KNOPPIX and not used anywhere else, and I don't know if it's ported or portable to other architectures. There is no make-able source tree for KNOPPIX; the source packages for the various init/setup scripts are available from knopper.net, but it appears you are expected to get the Debian source packages from Debian. (I was just reading a discussion on this; I think it's GPL-okay and a reasonable way to do it for this project. Besides Klaus said the complainer could send him 4 CDRs and a self-addressed envelope if he really wanted the sources from him.)

Anyway, back to the point: I'm not sure how portable the setup scripts or device autodetection (via Kudzu) are to other architectures.

I've been reading up about some of this stuff lately because I'm considering building some custom LiveCD's and was thinking forward to being multi-architecture friendly and also trying to decide whether to base my CDs on KNOPPIX or go a different direction. I definitely want a Debian base, though. Tomorrow I'll probably start looking at the various scripts I linked to earlier and also compare cloop to cramfs and any other compressed filesystems I can find. (At first glance, cloop appears to be a compressed ISO9660 filesystem; I'm wondering why?) I'll probably also build a LiveCD from a minimal Debian instal KNOPPIX-style just to prove to myself that I understand it.

I have read these comments here, and it looks like most of the complaints are from ancheint distros. Take a modern distro for example, such as Knoppix.

WIth knoppix, just insert the CD, reboot the computer, press the enter key. Thats all you have to do.

It just works (tm).
It detects your hardware, displays a cute little tux at the top of the screen, shows a nice little green progress bar, then it loads KDE, if your sound card was detected, it will say "Intiating Start-up Sequence". Its version of KDE has been modified to be the Knoppix Desktop Environment, so KDE was the obvious choice.

Your list of disks will be displayed on the desktop, so click on one to display its contents. It comes will all the apps you need to do common everyday things. OpenOffice for your documents, Xine for your Movies, XMMS Music player for your MP3s, Konqueror and Mozilla for your web browsing, with built in pop-up blocking.

Did I mention over 100 games? Yes, a hundred pre installed games, no more games complaints!

Best of all, this is all from a "Live CD". No installation required. If you havent go to "install" it at all. 99% of new computers are able to boot from the CD, so grab a knoppix disk today! Its amazing how they did it, but unlike Micro$oft you can leaglly get the source code to see how.

Download it now today, recently updated to include improved hardware detection, and in the 0.001% chance that it dosent work, please help them support it!

For everyday use, I recomend Mandrake 10, Ive tried the beta and it rocks. You can get 9.2 if you cant wait, but 10 will include the two of the most anticipdated Linux software of all time, KDE 3.2 and Kernel 2.6.

There IS NO EXCUSE not to just try Linux, many first tried Linux this way, and once your done, give the disks out like AOL cds, they are so easy, to use, that No wonder the Linux is hard trolls are actually getting the -1, troll rather than 5, insightful.

HB: Screw this, here's a nice CD, put it in your machine and restart your computer.

WUF: What's that?

HB: It's called a knoppix CD. You can run linux and use that KDE thing you hear me blabber so much about without installing anything on your harddrive, and if you like it, you can install it anyway.

WUF: Wow, I'll try that. Thanks!

When I wan't to use *nix tools under Windows I've always trusted Cygwin, but I can see how this project can provide a good alternative to Cygwin XFree86 as suggested in the roadmap. This could also provide an excellent solution for developers to test interoperability between Internet Explorer and Linux webservers - especially if they are limited to one computer. It could also be used to educate people on using Linux, it is a perfect match with Knoppix in this respect.

Wine developers could use this compare apps running natively and those running under wine side-by-side.

Here you go.

If the spyware is on the computer when you buy it, the spyware is also on the "recovery" CD.

Dude, you're getting Debian, and you can try it out with Knoppix, is the only answer that won't cost you $150 and still come with spyware. That's right, XP home comes with spyware all on it's own. Tools such as spybot and addaware, as nice as they are, can't really solve the problem. Closed source sucks that way, and it's getting worse every year.

Well, KDE is a very large package. That might be a big part of the problem. However, I suggest you investigate a Linux distribution called Knoppix. If your 1GB system has a bootable CD-ROM drive, then none of your operating system need reside on the hard drive at all! On one CD they have the entire KDE environment, the KOffice suite of applications, OpenOffice.org suite, and many many many other useful applications. Not only that, the boot process autodetects a wide variety of hardware and automatically enables it.

Failing that, you might check out something like LNX-BBC, which fits an entire GNU/Linux operating system onto a bootable CD. But the point is that a very workable version of GNU/Linux most certainly can fit on a 1GB drive. but probably not Debian 3.0 or Mandrake with the KDE option selected.

Yes, both MS Windows and the average Linux distro suffer from code bloat, but when you got XP on that system, what apps were available? When you go installing something like a stock KDE environment, you're probably pulling in a lot more functionality than you would ever get from a raw Windows install.

I disagree.
I purchase HW for various chores (like PVR, transcoding machines, distributed computing etc.) for use at home and each time I get a new box I have to spend hours getting everything up and running (using Gentoo) and configured as I want that specific box.

Having an installer which reduces the number of steps and configures stuff which the computer should know better than I (what HW I'm using and what firmware etc. are on it) is something I see as A Good Thing. This means that even "experienced people" can benefit from good installers (ever wonder why Linus is/was running RH and not Slackware?).

Regarding Debians' current installer, well it's simple if you know the answers to all the questions asked, not if you don't. (then again, that's true for most installers isn't it?) Compared to Gentoo, the Debian installation process is much quicker at the expense of "tweakability". I personally think the big difference between Debians installation process and RedHat's for example, is that you have to enter fdisk/disk druid and that it's curses based. You also have the option to specify what additional modules you want (the hard thing for new users is to know if they need those extra modules). Other than that I don't see a big difference between RH and Deb.

As for new users... Asking as few questions as possible regarding stuff the computer should be able to figure out is a huge help. I still recall the first time I tried to install X, having to know the H&V Frequencies of my monitor, each refresh rate, what ramdac my gfx card had, what resolutions were supported etc. etc. etc. (infinitum it felt like). Not even going to mention configuring a slim kernel for the first time (what modules.. aha, I have an IDE CD burner, then I should obviously know I need scsi support!)..

Needless to say, stuff like the RH/Mandrake installers or better yet, the knoppix one are a great help for newbies.

PS. for those people stuck in Windows land, not because they don't want to try out Linux, but because of "being intimidated" by all the seemingly pre-req knowledge one needs to even get a distro off the ground, I'd advise start looking at Knoppix. This distribution has a "live cd" which has the ability to boot up a complete "Linux system" from a CDROM, without installing anything on the HD. It configures everything automatically so you'll just boot it up and you have an "MS-Windows clone" (I'm going to get bashed for this comment I'm sure) in front of you when it's up. It's a nice way to get the possibility to "touch Linux-land".

Even if you don't 'switch', it has saved me and others quite a bit of time in emergencies or diagnosing hardware problems. (Simple example: Mouse stops working under Windows. Boot Knoppix. If the mouse works, it's Windows...if the mouse fails, it's the mouse.)

(SNIP! from previous post on /.);

[Knoppix] requires no commitment, and can be handy for fixing problems and testing out machines even if you don't use it as a Linux desktop. The 11/03/2003 release is a bleeding edge release and has OpenOffice 1.1, though the 09/24/2003 release should be more stable.

Knoppix is only slightly lightweight, and you don't compromise much by using it except for the fact it's a boot CD and isn't as snappy as a hard drive based one. You can even test out your TV card and other hardware if you want. 256MB RAM is not required but is a realistic minimal amount for full use of what's on the disk.

1. Knoppix (English pages)

Tip: If you don't get a desktop, or the monitor doesn't sync up properly, use the option screen=800x600;

1. knoppix screen=800x600

More details here if you want to tweak it more. It supports USB and floppy drives to store desktop information and program settings.

Things most certainly have changed. I suggest you download a Knoppix ISO or a Gentoo Live CD, burn it to CD-R (or CD-RW if your older machine's CD drive can read them), insert the CD into your old machine, boot from the CD, and behold how little configuration you will need to do to have a working GNU/Linux system. You won't have to go through a lengthy install process to try it out again and from what I hear, the configuration is mostly automatic (obviously things like static IP addresses and email will need to be configured, just like in MS Windows or Apple Mac OS).

I believe you that you're not a troll. But goddamn do you sound like one.

I guess you're just an example of what Linux has to cater to to get at more desktops -- people who aren't willing to research their problems and aren't willing to try to get things to work.

For someone who supposedly codes in C and Java, haven't you ever had a compiler error or runtime error you didn't quite understand? What do you do? Say "oh fuck it, this program isn't worth writing and this language isn't worth writing in"?

Get a Knoppix CD and try again.

I have really no idea why it was modded as Funny. I had nothing but great experience with dd(1), especially the version from GNU Fileutils. If you are stuck with MS Windows and cannot use Knoppix then check out Cygwin. One of the great advantages of dd(1) is the ability to use good old Unix-style anonymous pipes, so with Netcat or SSH it can really do miracles with filesystems cloning across the network, be it LAN (with nc(1)) or the Internet (with ssh(1) as nc(1) sends data as unencrypted).

If you've got a linux box, dd's the way to go
If you don't, you can use a Linux LiveCD

Worked well enough for my little sister. She's not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Everytime I have tried to switch to Linux I have had to come back to Windows in a few days due to some reason or the other. I must have done that more than 25 times now (I'm not kidding). I even had problems with Mandrake which I found easiest of them all. And I consider myself pretty tech savy person (no really I am :-).

Well, that's good that you're tech savy since I'd be nuts to be ~your~ tech support -- you are jinxed!

I have all sorts of hardware and Linux doesn't work for me that well yet. For example I spent three days figuring out how to use my tv tuner card with linux but to no avail.

Did I mention that you might be jinxed? :)

On a serious note, grab Knoppix. It requires no commitment, and can be handy for fixing problems and testing out machines even if you don't use it as a Linux desktop. The 11/03/2003 release is a bleeding edge release and has OpenOffice 1.1, though the 09/24/2003 release should be more stable.

Knoppix is only slightly lightweight, and you don't compromise much by using it except for the fact it's a boot CD and isn't as snappy as a hard drive based one. You can even test out your TV card and other hardware if you want. 256MB RAM is not required but is a realistic minimal amount for full use of what's on the disk.

1. Knoppix (English pages)

Tip: If you don't get a desktop, or the monitor doesn't sync up properly, use the option screen=800x600;

1. knoppix screen=800x600

More details here if you want to tweak it more. It supports USB and floppy drives to store desktop information and program settings.

Wake up and smell the kibble. Read the whole thing and they tell you where to go.

I agree. Also I think I'd like a pony. But seriously, haven't you ever used Knoppix? Oh, I'm sorry, you *don't* have to click "next." (Yes, it is easier to install and run than Windows.)

Have you looked at Partition Image? The NTFS support is still 'experimental', but it can load images over a network from a server. I don't know if it can boot them or not, but it's open-source, so I'm sure you can get some kind of help from the developers toward adding that sort of capability yourself. Then, you'd just need to make a set of bootable CDs that run the partimage client and automatically rewrite the hard drive with the correct image. Shoot -- if you put 2GB of RAM in them, would it be possible to go diskless and load everything onto a RAM Drive? That way, the PC rewipes itself every reboot and you might even get a kick in performance if the disk accesses don't clog the memory bus too badly.

Now, this probably doesn't help because you are looking for a Windows setup, but if you needed Linux, what about rolling your own customized version of Knoppix?

IIRC, the latest versions support network booting from hosted images, and several others have taken Knoppix and tweaked it with various different hardware support and software changes (Overclockix, for example, adds stuff like support for NVidia's NForce2 chipset using NVidia's Linux drivers, which Knoppix won't include because of the licensing terms.)

...though, on second thought. I suppose if you were willing to go through all that trouble, you might just be willing to host the /usr tree read-only from your server -- that would do about the same thing.

Your post reminded me to check the Knoppix site for a new version... and it looks like the project is dead, or at least comatose, due to the current states of patent law.

EXT3 under heavy loads can be unrelible, but this is can be managed, EXT2 is a "standard" FS but it doesnt have some of the nicer features like journaling. RiserFS is maturing, but its not necisiarily ready for primetime yet.

As for WinFS it is not a file system more like a Journaling system that sits on top of NTFS which has several more porblems with its structure than Ext3 and Ext2. Also WinFS uses MSSQL which is not necissarily a good idea, if they put in in userspace (sorry, Application Space for Windows) it could mean that WinFS is vulnerable to malformed or ,malicious code, if you put it in the kernel (like say IIS) then you might take a performance hit, it is also a bad design to put servers and databases in the Kernel unless absolutely necisary. The fact is that Windows has never separated the User space and the system space, which makes it inherently less secure in almost all aspects.

You obviously havent tried gnome 2.4 or kde 3.1, I would suggest you download KNOPPIX In many circles it is better as a user interface than Windows XP. I personly thin that a minimalist approch is better for GUIs since XP came with a lot of crap that wasn't useful and a lot of the more usefull features turned off. (yes I leagaly purchased and use on one of my Machines a copy of Windows XP)

This code leak has a weird timing, as Linux 2.6 is in its home strech, panther is Releaced and all MS has had in the last 6 months is patches for security holes.

No software is perfect, but some software is better than others.