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Linux takes about 6 months to learn. After that, its all fun and games.

However, there are some distros that'll work out of box. Redhat, Mandrake, Suse, Xandros, etc. However, what I think would help is if these distros came preinstalled.

Debian is very nice if you take a few months to learn it. Installing software is very easy.

Try a Knoppix live CD to get a feel for Linux, if you haven't already.

• Web browsers - Mozilla, Netscape, Opera
• browser plugins - Acrobat Reader, QuickTime, Ghostscript/Ghostview, Shockwave+Flash, Media Player, Sun Java Runtime, Real Player (and how I hate those plugins that need all their droppings cleaning up afterwards).
• Instant Message updates, MSN messenger, Windows Messenger
• Other tools - Ethereal, Sam Spade, GIMP, UnxUtils, Zip Central, GPG+WinPT

amazingly enough They have a torrent link on their download page

From the Knoppix home page, try this link.

If you read the information on their home page about patents (or at least skimmed for links), you would realize you could get to this page.

Just go here.

Sadly, the software patent battle highlighted here and here might halt further development of such great ideas, ideas such as Knoppix.

Actually, the old page is still there. It appears that the current entry page on the KNOPPIX site is just a "splash" screen put up to protest the EU Parliament considering "software patents." The old German and English pages are still there. You just have to try some of the hyperlinks...

Actually, the old page is still there. It appears that the current entry page on the KNOPPIX site is just a "splash" screen put up to protest the EU Parliament considering "software patents." The old German and English pages are still there. You just have to try some of the hyperlinks...

Actually, the old page is still there. It appears that the current entry page on the KNOPPIX site is just a "splash" screen put up to protest the EU Parliament considering "software patents." The old German and English pages are still there. You just have to try some of the hyperlinks...

Off the top of me head, I know of Knoppix, Morphix, Damn Small Linux, and Puppy Linux.
There are a few others, but I don't remember them off the top of my head.

None of the problems you describe are unique to linux- on windows boxen, you get those problems *plus* the windows-specific ones.

Not to mention that Outlook is an electronic Petri dish; Windows support contracts are outrageously expensive; many people are required to enter auth codes for winxp- I've never had to do this with linux even at install time; support-motivated upgrades for linux don't cost you extra, you just download and install the new version of the distro; and the 50 CD's are for all the software that doesn't come standard on Windows but does on modern linux distributions- why make your own when you can just download the free software version without having to worry about licensing issues?

That's the ultimate benefit of free software in my mind- the freedom to not have to deal with any licensing bullshit before installing my software. No license code entry, etc. Just download to any computer and install.

I have been made aware that the european parliament is going to vote on legislation regarding software patents. Here is an excellent FAQ. I understand the vote has been delayed until Sept. 22. My question is will this ruling have any effect on the vote, one way or another? Though I am a shameless Windows user, I have been known to boot into knoppix now and then, and they have stopped development due to this pending legislation. I'd like to know people's thoughts on this and how it effects the future of linux development.

-D

Drive #1 - 8 MB IBM M-Systems DiskOnKey

This is basically for Windows only, i.e. only when I'm at work.

In the unencrypted 6 MB section, I've got some basic "stuff" - C / Perl code I'm working on, text files, edna playlists, and a copy of FCE Ultra, just in case it's needed.

In the encrypted 2 MB section (which is accessed with M-System's KeySafe util), I've got a copy of PuTTY + key, TightVNC, and i.FTP, which is a small FTP client that's not too shabby (picked up from TinyApps.org.

Drive #2 - 64 MB Lexar JumpDrive

All that's really on here is my Knoppix /home directory. In there is my Perl script, data files, emulators and ROMs that I'm currently working on for an HTPC-type of project (more info can be found at http://dev.tonydanzabonanza.com/tuxstation/ ).

I wouldn't dare reformat a work machine with another OS. The feasibility isn't the problem - it's the wrath of an angry sysadmin that is. I would like to keep my job in this economy.

I DO, however, frequently boot my machine with knoppix. Most corporate IT environments prevent users from installing their own software - but Knoppix has pretty much every app I need. I sacrifice local file storage and some embedded data like PIM stuff, but its just more comfortable and doesn't raise the ire of the lesser IT geeks.

Lindows, SO CLOSE. Please (or Knoppix) someone take the OS-on-CD to the next level. Yes having Knoppix and LindowsCD is great, but no one wants to have to setup their mail settings each and every time the system reboots. ... As an alternative...flashram? A CF reader and a 32MB card cost what, $25 on the street? More than enough to keep mail settings, bookmarks, etc.

Knoppix 3.x has built-in support to autodetect USB drives such as pen-drives or CF (etc.) readers and pull your workstation settings from there.

With these drives coming in sizes up to 1 gigabyte now - it makes a pretty good option for even more than saving your settings, you could even keep all your email on there, and maybe a few favorite apps so you don't have to pull them down over the network all the time.

The drawback I see is that being (mostly)USB 1.x based (and the two Webstation models seem to both only have USB 1.x ports) the throughput is much slower than an ethernet connection to a local server and is actually slower than some cable modem connections to the Internet.

As to these Webstations - I'd would want either a DVD or CD-RW drive (or combo-drive) instead of a plain CD if I were going to get it for home use. With a high-speed CD-RW drive you could use it much as you would any other low-end Linux PC - except you wouldn't use the CD-RW for caching.

Knoppix is debian.
Lindows is debian.
It would not be that hard to make a bastard child of the two. After all there is no sense in reinventing the wheel.

That's just it: we're not talking about secretaries. We're talking about people who have the financial resources to pay programmers like us to make the enhancements they need.

Let's not take the RedHat vs. Microsoft example then. RedHat drops old versions a lot faster than MS.

So what? Users don't need to upgrade to the latest RedHat version just to get individual features. Example: iptables requires Linux 2.4. RedHat 5.2 had (IIRC) Linux 2.0. Nothing stops competent people from upgrading just the kernel to Linux 2.4 with RedHat 5.2. Therefore, if you're happy with RedHat 5.2, except that you want a few more features (like iptables), you have the option of either upgrading to a newer RedHat, or you can get someone competent to just add those features. With closed source software, you often don't have the second option.

And remember all the distros out there are made by companies that care about big bucks also.

I don't remember it because it's not true. Widely-used, high-quality distros like Debian, Knoppix, and Gentoo (just off the top of my head -- I'm sure there are a few others) are all made by people not developing for profit.

Flippant answer: It is possible -- just don't install that silly Windows OS. Presto! No more problem installing Linux, no need for any non-free software.

Semi-flippant answer: Why not turn this question around and ask why the wonderful copy of Windows you got "free" with your machine (and I use "free" here only in the loosest sense) requires you to spend $69.95 just for the privilege of installing a second operating system on the machine that you own?

Non-flippant answer: You don't have to spend any additional money to install Linux. There's several free options available. Here's three of them just off the top of my head:

• Knoppix - the most recent version includes qtparted, which can resize NTFS. And even after you've installed the distro of your choice, Knoppix makes a great recovery CD, so hang onto it. Downside for the bandwidth-challenged is that this is a 700MB ISO image.
• Mandrake - the first Mandrake 9.1 installation CD can resize NTFS partitions. Slightly smaller (650MB ISO) download than Knoppix. Might be handy if you don't have any 700MB CD-Rs handy.
• BootIt NG - the maintenance mode has a very easy-to-use NTFS resizer. (Shareware, 30-day free trial use. If you can't get your NTFS partition resized within a month, give up and have the 8-year-old kid from next door give you a hand.) Very small download -- it's a bootable floppy image -- so a decent option if you're stuck with dial-up access and want to avoid sucking down a 650-700MB ISO image.

Method 1:

mkisofs -z

From the manpage:

Generate special RRIP records for transparently compressed files. This is only of use and interest for hosts that support transparent decompression, such as Linux 2.4.14 or later. You must specify the -R or -r options to enable RockRidge, and generate compressed files using the mkzftree utility before running mkisofs. Note that transparent compression is a nonstandard Rock Ridge extension. The resulting disks are only transparently readable if used on Linux. On other operating systems you will need to call mkzftree by hand to decompress the files.

(Should not be too hard to port the transparent decompression code to *BSD and Darwin...)

Method 2:

KNOPPIX uses transparent decompression through a loop device to store more than 2 GBytes on a simple CDROM.

Just my two cents.

> Knoppix: IQ test1: Find a page in english

Right on the front page of knoppix.org:

--> This page is now also available in english, preceded by a graphic of US/British flag.

> Knoppix: IQ test2 (tech knowlege): Figure out how to fix the frame representation so that the page is not at 110% (ie no matter how much screen your browser takes up, you still have to scroll to see the last couple of words of every line).

Get a better browswer; Opera v6 has no troubles with any of the Knoppix pages.

Anyway, these Debian posts here for the past few days have convinced me to dive into it. Where is the best place for a Debian newbie to start?

I can't even get gnome to work properly with my new intel motherboard with the sound and graphics all combined and sharing memory. Naturally intel doesn't want to admit that anyone would run anything but windoze on their system. Bleck. And I had trouble persuading the machine to cough up its personal details even with win installed (as well as Freebsd). Freebsd is quite happy, it's just the GUI layers that won't speak to me.

I would love a "default" install that just runs, offers me choices that are available instead of expecting me to know how the intel board understands itself (when intel won't tell me either). Then I'd like to be able to go back and tweak things later.

Knoppix: IQ test1: Find a page in english
Knoppix: IQ test2 (tech knowlege): Figure out how to fix the frame representation so that the page is not at 110% (ie no matter how much screen your browser takes up, you still have to scroll to see the last couple of words of every line).

And that's just their web page. Not very encouraging. I don't think either group (Knoppix or Debian) are very focussed on non-geeks. Perhaps if they imagined that undirected computers were going to use their operating system. Ie build an interface a moron could use.

Missing FAQ:
What's the difference between Knoppix KDE and Gnome?

How do I know I'm getting an english language gui install cd image (and not german)?

refs
google Knoppix
First result German
second result page overwidth
at last, just right, sort of

Even if Debian will not be the desktop distribution of the future, surely there will be many distributions basing on Debian and adding some functionality to it.
One of such excellent distributions is Knoppix Live on CD distribution, which is one-CD linux able to run on almost any hardware in the universe. It runs even on machines on which RedHat and SuSE cannot (I have seen such!). The heart of Knoppix is its fantastic hardware-auto-configurator.
Debian is the base for Knoppix because it is very stable and has clear config files.
I think that the Debian community should put Debian forward as a reference system and a potential basis for other fine-tuned distros.

Eh? Depends on what you do with your computer. RedHat 5?! You're talking massive changes since then.

What did I do next? Not much else to do. None of my apps (read : games) were available at the time for Linux.

All you do with your computer is play games?? Hmmm. True, maybe Linux isn't for you. Although I'm a hardcore Quake3 player so that's my favorite game and it just happens to run great in Linux. I play some Tribes2 and UT2003 in Linux also.

I was unable to find replacements for any of my tools (read : an XTree clone such as ZTree, Office, Visual Studio, Drive Image, etc.)

Xtree? Try "ytree" in Linux. Personally I'd rather use a GUI file explorer or the console though (Konqueror, Nautilus, ROX, etc.).

Office? OpenOffice, Koffice, the GNOME office stuff... What applications do you use? There are many, many word processors besides the "office" suite versions. Same holds for the other applications.

Visual Studio? I do a lot of VS development and agree there is nothing as good for Linux, but there are tools if you're into that kind of thing. Kdevelop, wxPython (VB-like), Eclipse, NetBeans, and many others. There are craploads of development tools on Linux.

Drive Image??? How much time per day do you spend in that app?? There are a ton of backup applications for Linux. I can't comment on any of them because I don't back up as much as I should. Kbackup and others are easy to use.

I mean what really do you spend your time doing on the computer?

Need to web surf? MozillaFirebird, Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, Konqueror, Lynx, Nautilus, etc.

E-Mail? Mozilla, Balsa, Kmail, mutt, pine, and all the others I'm forgetting about.

Other popular and useful apps:
The Gimp
VMware

I could just go on and on. It really doesn't sound like you gave Linux a fair shot. Plus that was 5 years ago, that's an eternity in computer terms.

Burn the Knoppix ISO and you won't even need to do anything to your computer to run a newer Linux. It boots fully off the CD and contains a ton of applications. It will kinda chug because it has to read from the CD so much, but it works good enough and doesn't touch your current system.

> First, I don't speak German, that is the first big obsticle I have to get around with Knoppix.

Well then, I suggest you use the English version. When you go for the download, look for filenames like "KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-06-06-EN.iso". If it has the EN in it, it's an English version.

Yum!

you can already run different linux distributions on a xbox (debian, mandrake, redhat, suse, ...) with a few kernel hacks, _but_ why does nobody make an own linu-X-box? it should be based on debian . just add a few features from knoppix or XLLPS. make some individual skins for mozilla, gnome or kde (or even an special window maker), gaim, etc. that are optimized for TV-resolution & gamepad as input device, multimedia (divX, mp3, vcr features), emulators (gba, mame, snes, ps, n64, ... + VMware _g_) & if you have an easy disto (just put the cd in), that windows user can use without probs then a new hype is started. what do you think of that idea or is there already an _independend_ X distro?

I agree on the love to tinker, and the thing I'm amazed about is that people don't want to do the same in their own field..

Also, another poster brought this up, but if consistency and 'just working' are large goals for a desktop OS, why is Microsoft winning in the desktop market?

Really I don't think that Linux displaces Macintosh user base, I think more the opposite. I see more people who liked linux but grew tired of endless tinkering, going to OS X for sanctuary. I think it's both vs. Windows. But, number wise, I think it's inevitable that Linux will outpace Mac on the desktop...

In the end, I suspect it will be gaming that does it...

LRP is the grand daddy of many "embedded" linux projects. LRP proved two concepts, 1) the need for GPL appliances that run from ram and essentially read-only media, and 2) a clever compressed read-only package system (.lrp instead of .rpm or .deb) for conserving boot media storage space. These ideas spawned LEAF, CoyoteLinux, and forshaddowed Knoppix, which all boot from floppy or CD-R media with compressed files to improve storage.

LRP was floppy firewall distro, that did not need a harddrive. It needed only 386 PC or better, 2 Nics, floppy drive, and sometimes a keyboard and monitor. It did not do fancy things, just NAT routing, firewalling and DHCP. But you could add .lrp packages for other cool features like DNS caching. The .lrp packages were just a renamed .tar.gz with binaries compiled a certain way, but they worked and saved space. Although building an LRP floppy was not easy for a novice, the package system made floppy firewall setup MUCH easier. With developers shrinking package sizes again and again, other lrp packages could be added, or log files could be added. Very clever.

But LRP failed to inivate fast enough, (e.g. I lobbied for a bootable CDs, to no avail) or document well enough, so Linux Embedded Application Firewall [LEAF] forked off. LEAF got space on SourceForge and spawned flavors, such as Oxygen, Dachstein, Eiger, Bering and others quickly helped fill out the space, improving core technologies and documentation. LEAF added bootable CDs and tons of packages. But LEAF struggled with picking a GlibC version and development of extensions became some what Balkanized.

The size limitation of the floppy made 2.4 kernal and iptables unatainable. Chuck Stienkhuler removed this boundry with his LRP-CD, which could fit every major linux ethernet driver, and so much more.

When I saw that, I thought, "well why not a full distro on a bootable CD", and was pleasently surprised by finding Knoppix. I even was the first person to mentioned it on Slashdot. [search Knoppix in stories on slashdot and find the first entry :) ]

LRP also spawned the CoyoteLinux firewall, which added a Win32 floppy build exe and a linux floppy build bash script. It makes building a floppy firewall really easy.

Death of LRP is not a surprise with LEAF on the scene. There is much life in the "embedded" linux space beyond firewalls. LRP got thing moving and many other GPL projects have adopted the core ideas and kept up the rate of acceleration. Bootable CD distros are exploding, into Mesh Networks, MAME systems, Linux on X-box hacks, PVR systems, LAN MP3 Servers, print server, LAN DNScache/DHCP/NTP server, Honey Pots and on and on. We will se more and more bootable CD distros, that will make our lives easier, and take the strain out of admin and system upgrade. Oh look, a new ISO on line, I down load and reboot my system. If it does not work, I pop the old CD-R back in. No muss, no fuss.

LRP is dead, long live LEAF and Knoppix, and ...

-Nathaniel
Mac Refugee, Paper MCSE, Linux wanna be.

The BBC never produced a single computer, they just held a competition which was won by something that was extremely powerful at the time. However, once they had selected their system from the competing designs, they produced a series of programs which were linked to a UK govt initiative to get computers into schools.

It was far from perfect, but it worked and it was quite successful. Now they don't need to worry about a platform. They don't have to worry about the software (or even the packaging - think of Knoppix or the more configurable Morphix). All they need to do is to select a basic minimum system to present and to help out with broadcast material.

Auld Monitors: Monitor World

PCI Vendor and Device lists

( maybe you can get Knoppix to tell you, with "lspci", what a device is, for the previous one...

Many know of Adrian's Rojak Pot BIOS guide, sometimes useful for weird BIOS 'features' like the older "Format HD" that doesn't tell you this is for old RLL drives... even though no ESDI/RLL drives were sold in the year the mobo was made... (ouch)

I bookmarked, but haven't bothered with yet, HardwareSecrets.com, maybe it's got the stuff youse want...

-sigh- I USED to have a link to a (Russian?) site that listed all sorts of old drives' jumpers ( not the clothing ), dunno what happened to that one...

If you find more such gems, add 'em, eh?

Cheers,

-me

Knoppix, motherfucker.

1) Klaus Knopper. If he can put 2 Gigs of software into a 700MB iso, I'd like him to have the (compatible as advertised?) 1000MB version to play with, too.

2) Jorg Schilling, whose cdrtools is the easiest (well, my favorite) way to burn ISOs under Linux, for obvious reasons ;)

Jeez, I DON'T recommend Gentoo to Joe Sixpack. Actually, when a total newbie asks me about Linux, what I've done lately is hand him a Knoppix CD. Knoppix is easy-peasy to use since it requires no installation, and as long as the user has enough RAM (pref 256 megs or better) it runs decently.

Later on I point them to Red Hat or Mandrak or SUSE or some other easy-to-use distro.

Gentoo is what I run on my personal machines. For a user who wants all the latest stuff running at its optimum speeds on a custom system, Gentoo is simply the bee's knees. It's also incredibly easy to maintain, despite its relatively involved installation process. I love Gentoo.

That said, this evangelizing is kind of off-topic, but I felt the need to explain myself. :-P

1). tomsrtbt Linux on a floppy - essential!
2). Windows 98SE boot floppy
3). Knoppix 3.2 bottable Linux on a CD.
4). Memtest86 bootable CD for testing RAM - excellent!
5). DOS freeware F-Prot and recent virus definitions
6). Norton's DOS utilities
7). Various HD setup utilities (eg: Western Digital, Seagate boot floppies)
8). Freesco Linux router/webserver on a floppy
9). Sample linux config files (eg: XFConfig-4, fstab, etc)
10). Frozen-Bubble bootable CD for times of stress

Also try these:

FreeSCO - great for routers

tomsrtbt

DemoLinux

RIP Linux Rescue System

SuperRescue CD

Morphix

For Windows software, take a look here

• Leatherman - Always carry one with you. Has damm near every tool you will ever need to fix a computer
• Norton Ghost - Ghost images of computers are so very, very, very,very helpful of a trick/tool
• Every copy of windows you can find with there respective boot disks
• A Laptop with NIC/Modem. seriously helpful if you need drivers off the internet and a computer is broken.
• The largest collection of drivers you can find. Just grab em and keep them. Drivers aren't that big and ever my collection (a few thousand) doesn't exceed 1 gbyte
• Maxtor/IBM/WD/etc hard disk testing software. Each company puts out it's own disks with these testing utilities on them. Search their pages to find the respective ones you will need.
• mcafee viruscan, updated w/ a emergency repair disk(I prefer to use 4.x version. Still updated regularly and works quite well). Self-explanatory
• Windows Service Packs, etc just in case they only have a modem connection

At least a full distro of Windows still fits on a single cd-rom unlike some other operating systems.

plus a really handy 'survival CD' that contains some very useful tools if your having a non-boot day ;)

It pretty much already exists it just does other stuff too.

One word: Knoppix.

Isn't this what Linux Live cd's like Knoppix are about? They create a virtual ramdisk so the more memory, the better. And what's more, they don't touch your harddrive unless you tell them to.

I attend community college at night and in one class we have to telnet into a Solaris box from W2K. Our login name is the frist 3 letters of our last name, followed by the last four digits of our social security number. Guess what the password is? Yeah, our full social security number. One day I came to class early with a copy of Knoppix on a CD and booted off it and ran ettercap, poisioning the switch so all traffic goes through my machine first... One by one, as students came in, I was able to sniff the their login name and password (which was their social security number). I sent an email to the school using that as an example of why students passwords, or their ID number should be a SSN number. I have not yet gotten a response

Linux Care Bootable ToolBox, Knoppix, and a dozen of small diskettes distros...

Yes, why not? You could probably make your own slimmed-down disc based on it, and it's got all you need. It doesn't get any easier.

Get it here

"Knoppix has always been about KDE (the whole name implies it)."

Actually, the name comes from the guy who produces it, Klaus Knopper.

But then again, maybe he changed his name by deed poll ;)

You should really check out Knoppix. This is a version of Linux that boots directly off of a live-CD, auto-detects all your hardware and boots up to a Windows like user interface (KDE), without you having to do anything. Learning a bit more about Linux from there should be pretty easy.

takes on a more nefarious purpose. I've had several people try out Linux via VMWare, since it wouldn't touch thier main OS. One of my best advocay tools would be gone. Not to mention the headaches that some Mac users would now face with SoftPC off of the market.

just adding a correct link to the english page for KNOPPIX

am downloading that tool as we speak .. looking good so far :)