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Why not try Linux? Test the waters with the Knoppix Live CD (Boots off of the CD and run's completely from RAM) and if you like it move up to a beginner distribution (install wise) like Mandrake or SuSE. I've been on Linux a couple weeks now it's been mostly an easy switch with only a few text files edited by hand. Linux does everything I need. Give Linux a try - with it's wide variety of free software I think it would suit your needs too.

My 12 year old son has a P200 running an hd install of Knoppix for his main computer in his bedroom. I deleted Open Office and a few of the graphical games but everything else works fine. He now knows what an .rtf file is and how to save them to his floppy for school.

His distribution is one of the most powerful in terms of automated hardware detection; it is also very attractive for people who are willing to try a Linux distribution, but without having to touch their hard disks; and it has generated a flurry of derivatives for all needs and tastes.

Kudos to Klaus Knopper and all the Knoppix-based distros !

Take the Knoppix DVD and just fill up the rest of the debian archive. I am not sure, but I think 8GB will just be enough for all i386 binaries.

This posting reminded me of an interaction that I had with a co-worker. He wasn't a developer in the hard core sense. He was the head of the team that did the web design. He could do flash. I don't know what that entails since I was director over the development team. I don't have any experience with flash.

He wanted to set up a server for his fiance's school. They could not afford Windows and he knew that Linux was cool so he chose Redhat. I believe it was around version 7 at the time.

He would tell me his stories of frustration about setting up RedHat. Every time he wanted to change a configuration option, he would reinstall the OS.

Before the Windows pandemic, I did a lot of System V work. I switched over to Windows because I could make more money but I still would run Unix at home for personal reasons. I ran Microport Unix for a while. I believe my first exposure to Linux was a distro from Walnut Creek called yggdrasil. Now I have old versions of Redhat on both a laptop and a desktop and I play around with these bootable CDs like dynebolic and knoppix.

You can see why I didn't have any problems with Linux. It would never have occurred to me to keep reinstalling Linux whenever I wanted to make a configuration change but that was what came naturally to the co-worker.

I don't know why he made that choice and I felt a little embarrassed to ask. I guess that was the first UI he saw concerning configuration and it was easy and he didn't try to look around for any other way to make his configuration changes.

I did give him some tips and I believe that he did successfully deploy Linux for the school in the end.

I have a question... I was thinking about doing this for some computers here in our library, but aren't you worried about someone using the available "tools" on the distro, such as ethereal, nmap, netcat, etc... to do some damage, or do you have a custom Knoppix with these and other network tools removed. I would just be worried about making some of the programs included on the CD available to the wrong people, and make it look like I'm providing a "hacking station" for whoever wants to use it.
This is a very cool way of using a knoppix disk, and quite some time back I started a thread on knoppix.net about creating a Kiosk Knoppix for just such a use, with all of the network tools removed. Kiosk Knoppix would just have the basics for an internet terminal: a browser, an office suite, and some type of instant messenger, etc..
Here is the link to the forum post (it should work once knoppix.net is done being /.'ed):
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2534

From that changelog:

"Please don't use knx-hdinstall any more!
I won't support it any longer and its just there as uhm, its not my project, but those of Christian Perle.
knoppix-installer should now work in both modes (see below) and give a fairly stable system. "

Something in here will surely help :)

Did you try any of the "no..." cheatcodes?

http://www.knoppix.net/get.php

There look to be quite a few mirrors so you might actually get to download the software.

Thats one hell of a virus.

I suggest all Windows users go to http://www.knoppix.net/ and burn the CD.

knoppix.org is closed. knoppix.net is still up and working fine.

LUFS does what you want -- it will allow you to mount locally to/via ftp, ssh, gnutella, gnome vfs, memory cards, and CE devices.
Here's a discussion of people wanting to include it in the boot scripts for Knoppix.

That is a protest page, Klaus is protesting against the EU going down the path towards Software Patents. Try www.knoppix.net to get the latest iso.

I haven't tried it with a USB keychain drive, but it is mentioned in the KNOPPIX documentation. The online docs explain how to set up a persistent /home with KNOPPIX 3.1, but the capability is built into 3.2.

There are other knoppix remasters of gnome. See the full list, or try a few direct (morphix has had gnome for a while) links.

There is one. (kinda)

KnopMyth.

It doesn't just work off the cd like you'd think, but it is an easy installation.

I actually asked myself the same question the other day, but I haven't tried it yet. Need to get a capture card first.

Have a look at KnoppMyth Haven't tried it yet as I didn't have any trouble getting MythTV working, but it might be what you're looking for.

So the crazy idea is: why not create a special Linux distro as a gift for the journalist community?

It's called Knoppix. See the article Knoppix : The great linux advocate

Windows users can install and use gnumeric, simply by installing linux, booting a linux cdrom livecd, or buying vmware and installing linux, or by running Line (Line Is Not and Emulator).

well then looks like debian it is for you then.=)
download theknoppix iso and burn it to a cd.
insert cd
boot computer
at prompt trpe "knx-hdinstall"
less than 30 min from start to finish on decent hardware.
(might take an hour on a 300MHz with a 4x cdrom and a shitty old hard drive.)
there ya go installing Debian and then trying to get X to run in 1/6 the time.
you should think of working smarter instead of harder methinks.

Probably been said already but Knoppix is the ultimate way to test a notebook for Linux compatibility. It doesn't cost anything to go to a store and try it out on one of their demo machines. If you can't test or they don't have the machine try to go the Apple route as another poster said. I personally love the iBuddie 901 DeskNote I have. NewEgg.com used to sell them but no longer does.

Would the better or best be
http://knoppix.net
http://knoppix.org

Knoppix
From zero to GNU/Linux in 5 minutes.

It'd be just as easy to avoid the Lindows crap by putting together a similar workstation and use Knoppix. Heck, you can use compact flash storage to keep your Knoppix config files in a persistant home directory, so that would seem like the better alternative.

You could recover your data using Knoppix, which would let you boot into a system and read the file system. Unless you encrypted that.

Michael

Debian is a superior distro in many, many ways. I can't argue with your points b) and c), but a) is wrong. Debian is a pain in the ass to install.

I'm sure I won't be the first to suggest you install Knoppix (here and here) instead. You can run it from the bootable CD or you can install it to your hard drive following the (relatively) simple how-to.

Knoppix is based on Debian so you get all that tasty Debian flavor.

LinuxTag '03 will have a special DVD for visitors, with the first DVD edition of Knoppix with 4GB of live linux.

This would make a great addition to Knoppix.

An entire Linux operating system one CD running without a mod.

The goal is to build mindshare, you cannot get people to try Linux on their mission critical desktop PCs unless they trust you, truely trust you.

You can however get a stranger to run a CD on their gaming console, people dont have to trust you for that.

I believe that's why Knoppix was created -- so you could pop in the CD, reboot, and have a Linux desktop to play around with, without having to install/partition/nonsense.

Yes. It will be released at LinuxTag. see this post for more infomation.

I've just spent the last 21 months as network person at Moor Park High School in Preston, Lancs. I implemented two Linux servers which did internal www which staff could access parts of via their W:\ drive, mail, proxy (with authentication and ability to block kids by a gui), ability to reclone damaged NT/2000 workstations, quota limits for kids, staff and pupil shared areas (accessible via S:\ and T:\ drives), shell access for kids, remote KDE/GNOME desktops in a window for staff (not that they used them!)...

The whole thing cost them £400 in software. Unfortunately two weeks ago they still insisted on me spending 7 hours a week standing in a library doing duties telling kids to take their coats off... and all for less than six pounds fifty an hour (probably 9-10 USD per hour). They're now looking for three people to replace me. I've now gone self employed and am the cheapest IT person I know even at more than twice the rate they paid me.

The biggest difficulty I found with implementing Linux was getting it to understand our existing username/password database. You have several options, some of them being:

- Make everyone set a new password (bad idea - they'll want to know why)
- Use pwdump.c (available from Samba mirrors) to create an smbpasswd file from your existing NT or 2000 server.
- Use John the Ripper or L0phtcrack to crack your existing account database. This isn't such a great solution, as some passwords could take weeks to crack, and some passwords will get changed after you cracked them.
- Use Winbind, which is part of the Samba suite which will talk to your existing NT/2000 setup and make those user accounts appear as ordinary users. This is an absolutely great solution once it works; you can give them access to any service you want (it works through PAM, so it's as good as having them all in /etc/passwd in many ways) - such as ftp, ssh, local or XDMCP access, you can chown and chmod files and directories to them, and it just works. It can be, however, an absolute nightmare to set up, and so I've written a document on the subject and how to get past a number of random error messages here.
- Read the comments in smb.conf

Management are always a problem, and it's the usual scenario: if it's Free, it has to be crap. If this is a problem, then instead of telling them how good it is, just show them. It's not difficult to find a spare unused machine in a school, or to boot Knoppix onto something, and you only need something with 16 or 32MB to install Debian or an old version of RH onto it and make it a useful server - machines of that calibre of write offs in UK schools right now with all the money the UK government are pumping into them. (This quarter alone, we had £27,000 to spend on IT - something like $40,000.)

Set something up, and implement a feature that your network lacks - quotas, web, email, cloning (use Partition Image - a much nicer replacement to Norton Ghost), proxy server (use Squid and Webmin so that your boss can easily add users to a list of banned people). Consider writing a cronjob to automatically copy everyone's home directory once a day, and then suddenly you'll be able to restore someones work from backup from any particular day or week (depending on how much hard disk space you have - a couple of cheap maxtor 80GB disks or something similar will do the job) in the space of ninety seconds *every time*. No more messing with backup tapes. (But still do tape backups, because you don't know when a lightning strike/minor earth tremor is going to destroy every hard disk...)

Write a manual. "This is how our Linux boxes were set up. The IP is this, here are the open ports, these packages were compiled from sourc

If you're interested, give Knoppix a try. Since you don't have to install it to your hard drive to give it a try, you really don't waste much effort if it's not to your liking. It was the only distro I tried that actually configured my hardware properly (All I had to do was run sndconfig and a 2 GUI configuration tools which were in the KDE menu to get everything to work. This is after spending days struggling unsuccessfully with Mandrake and Slackware to play an MP3 or print a document). It's amazing that some lone guy in Germany wrote a configuration utility that (for me anyway) was far superior to what these companies can produce.

And that is one of the big weaknesses of Debian - you don't have that option of downloading a CD with a bunch of most often used packages. You have to go with either full network install, or buy all 7 CDs. I imagine that's a big deterrent to many people out there who may want to try out this great distribution otherwise. And by the way, if you want to know how much software can fit on one CD, look at the list packages in Knoppix 3.2. It's really amazing - it has practically everything any normal user would ever need on a Linux box. With a CD filled with .deb packages like that, no user will find himself downloading more than a handful of files by http apt-get. One good step in that direction I saw recently is Bonzai Linux - it's a 180M CD image of Debian-based distribution that has KDE 3.1.2 and some other usefull stuff - all in 180m iso image! And it is great at hardware autoconfiguration. However, Bonzai isn't Debian per se, whereas I would like to see similar effort for the official Debian...

Don't get me wrong - Red Carpet has gotten better by leaps and bounds, and when it works, it's wonderful.

Automated software can only go so far in resolving the mess of dependancies, and I finally understand why it wants to uninstall half my machine before I can download some package. But it still makes me a bit leery to go down the Ximian path without some serious functionality (or eye candy) to tempt me.

Since Mandrake 9.1 isn't supported yet (later this week, maybe), that's a bit premature anyway...

Given that (for reasons already discussed in great length) rolling back from a Ximian install is problematic, it would be nice if there were a Live CD (similar to Knoppix) to preview Ximian with.

Unfortunately, Knoppix dropped Gnome because it was just too difficult to get it working. The Morphix folk have a HeavyGUI with Gnome 2.2, so perhaps they will soon have a Ximian desktop release as well.

Has Ximian considered releasing a Live CD?

I wrote an article on the Knoppix.net site on how to make a normal Redhat system into a knoppix boot server. http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=229&h ighlight=tftpd

scripsit MsGeek:

First thing I'd do in a case like that is wipe Lindows and put a real Linux distro in...maybe Knoppix, maybe Mandrake 9.1.

TKinias said:
You misspelled Debian...

Just FYI, Knoppix IS Debian... Debian without the pain of installation.
It runs directly from a CDROM - you don't even need a hard drive! It's certainly worth taking a look if you haven't already.

Knoppix-Mib site is slashdotted, but you can find more about making mini-knoppix versions over at Knoppix.net

Bring Knoppix and LNX-BBC -- the former on a full-size CD in a bag or backpack, the latter on a business card CD in your pocket.

I created one that is console only, and boots to a Quake Team Fortress (original) server, with about 60 maps. I am currently trying to get a mod built for Morphix for this. My webserver can't handle the traffic, so I prefer not to give out the URL for knoppixquake, but if you really want it you'll figure out how to find it. :-)

Get out there and customize your version of Knoppix today!

The japanese PS2 uses a pcmcia port and an external hard drive. The American version is a edge connector similar to the ones used in the drive bays on laptops. I wonder if someone will port Knoppix over to the PS2 maybe get it running with a mod chip ? :) Knoppix is debian based too.

The config you were using may have been rigged to be as braindead as Vindoze[tm], but that doesn't mean you're stuck:
try http://www.knoppix.net/ for a bootable CD you can run on your own machine ( or on a friend's ), since it'll little-touch the machine's filesystem ( I think it now places a config-file on the first FAT16 / FAT32 filesystem it finds? ), and you can boot into either GNOME, KDE, or Xfce ( unless they've changed that...? it was an advanced-boot-option )

This type of CD would be perfect for Knoppix, 500M for the operating system, and 200M to store settings, files and email. It would mean the first truly portable fully featured OS.

I have yet to see a distro that is as easy to install as Corel Linux.

Maybe this is cheating, but could I suggest Knoppix? It really _is_ 'Debian for the average Joe', probably more so than Corel, since it requires no installation at all.

(On a slightly related note - can anyone recommend a tiny Linux distribution that runs off floppies? I am hoping to run an X server, icewm, PPP and ssh.)

no thats never been done before....

Knoppix
List of Mirrors

or has it?

no thats never been done before....

Knoppix
List of Mirrors

or has it?

Knoppix. Even though the Xbox has a harddrive, a cdrom based distro goes very well with this, and saves the need to repartition the xbox harddrive which distroys some data that some games need.

No, I don't. My office has those ports firewalled off. Not that I have tried... :)
I have to say that I do prefer the Windows Quake client over the Linux one. I use the wheel on the mouse, and haven't been able to get it to work with Quake on Linux.

However, I don't think the client would need to write anything to disk, so you could probably burn it to a CD and just run it from CD. Provided of course you had all the maps, mdls, and sounds already on there. Before Knoppix came along, I did have a Windows Quake Server that ran (not booted) from a CD.

But if you really wanted one, you could download Knoppix and remaster it to have a Quake client on there. The remastering isn't too hard. There is a remastering HOWTO on www.knoppix.net .

You could try distributing Knoppix or one of the other Live-CD distros, to reduce the chance of Little Jo partitioning away mummy's accounting data.

.. instead, just customise your knoppix cd to load /home/knoppix from USB pendrive. That way all your data is stored on the thumbdrive but not knoppix.

How are you going to fit 700MB on a thumb drive anyway?