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Try Knoppix or MandrakeMove.

They're the easiest ways to try out Linux and test if your hardware is compatible. Just download the iso, burn it, and reboot your computer. Have fun.

I am sure that before I have finished writing this comment many people will have already suggested GNUWin, TheOpenCD, Knoppix, Morphix, Dyne:bolic, Debian and GNU CDs but instead of jumping on the bandwagon and posting links to them (even though with no doubt those are great examples of software which every library should definitely have) I will suggest including some software which is less popular but which students might learn much more from (and in the end, is that not the whole purpose of a library?), id est: Debian GNU/Hurd, OpenBSD and EROS. Lots of useful software one can buy with a magazine, but these systems are much harder to find, while much more revolutionary and unquestionably invaluable if we want people to actually learn something important instead of only "clicking" the mouse. It is also very important to note that these systems would introduce students to real security, something which is hard to find and understand, yet even much harder to overestimate in the terrorism era and the invasion of our privacy with things like NSAKEY in Windows and NSAttributedString in Mac OS X. That is why I think that actively promoting them in every library would be the most insightful idea.

There's no need to wait several years, Linux is already ready for the desktop. If you don't believe me check out Mephis, Knoppix, or Xandros.

I presonally prefer Gentoo Linux becouse of the freedom you have in choosing what applications you want on your computer, though for a noob, it is a bit daunting.

Now it's time to catch up with distros that are way easier to use than XP and have interfaces that also do much more:

• Knoppix boots just about anything.
• Mepis does the same and gives you an install GUI. The new version gives you KDE 3.2, which kicks any proprietary interface's ass, and was used to make this post.
• Feather Linux nice for older computers and dead easy to use.

The Free and Open source comments quoted were true when they were written, but are not anymore. People really have gotten into the works enough to make many usable and easy interfaces. Like other "Free software will never do X" arguments, this one was false.

The gentle reader may remember these famous predictions. Free Software will never:

• make a kernel
• be useful in the Enterprise
• make anyone any money
• be able to work devices

As free software generated billions of dollars for big and small companies alike, runs on all manner of hardware for all kinds of companies that demand scalability and stability, we could be sure easy to use, polished interfaces were right around the conner. They are here and available to anyone with a good network connection.

Michelle, download and run Mepis today.

You'll get all kinds of software quickly and correctly installed. If there are incompatabilities you'll know right away. If you are generally impressed--- and I think these distributions are getting very impressive--- you have a good head start.

If you aren't generally impressed, you can look into anything that caught your eye and see if its ported to your OS of choice.

-Tupper

Surely there's a way you can express your displeasure with MS products to your friends with a little more tact?

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• Trying linux
• Using Linux on another PC
• Demoing Linux to other users
• Recovering a Windows Machine covered with viruses

• Knoppix
• MandrakeMove
• Gentoo Live

• Knoppix
• Mandrake move
• Gentoo

This would be 5, insightful 10 years ago, but not now. Has this guy heard of package managers? Every linux distribution has a an update utillity, which is intended for grandma and joe, while development kernels are for developers, who will package it in a joe proof click an icon, enter your root password and enjoy package (see, that wasn't so hard)

I bet this is just a recycled troll. I reccommend ANYONE who has heard that Linux is hard to use to see the truth by downloading Knoppix and witness how in just 30 seconds from boot your at a fully configured desktop with hundreds of applications, it just works! Lets see Microsoft do that! So this post is trying to spread old rumours about Linux.

FOR THE LAST TIME! LINUX IS NOT HARD TO USE! If you do think it is, reply with what was the last distribution you tried, I have found that 95% of complaints that Linux is hard to use is due to flaky or old linux distributions!

Debian doesn't detect hardware?

I suggest you make a Knoppix CD with LTP installed. With a little configuration, that will take care of all of all your tests for the memory, disk, IO, and CPU. You might want to install America's Army or something to test the video subsystem.

If you put a little effort into it, you'll have a test suite as good as, and likely better than, anything you could pay money for. If you want to buy something, you can make a donation to the LTP and Knoppix projects.

There are also simpler tools, like Memtest86. I find this tool to be invaluable when I try to salvage old hardwar. I can't begin to tell you how much time it's saved me that I would have spent aimlessly swapping components around.

Does anyone know where I can find Knoppix for PPC? I'd love to play around with it on some old iMacs I have lying around. However I only found an old release. I would think that linux-live cds should work even better om macs than on pcs, since there is so much less hardware to configure. The knoppix homepage states that the minimum requirements include a x86 processor.

If that R is followed by a W, you might want to turn that Windows CD into something more useful.

As a Linux user, I am sick of my Windows using freinds having problems. So I use my Linux skills to fix windows.

Useful Linux tools.
K-noppix. The Universal boot disk. Useful for deleting viruses, partitioning hard drives and of course getting rid of windows
Ports of famous Linux programs for Windows
Use this to secure the internet

It is working! Many people have asked me for my Linux CDRs and cannot be any happier. Linux saved my life as a techie. With the new KDE 3.2 there really is no excuse not to use Linux, as it is now almost totally idiot proof!

Why are you STILL using Windows filled with spyware crap! Get linux today. With KDE 3.2 just released there is really NO excuse!

Install Linux on your computer today!

You can always try a distro like Knoppix or Mandrake Move. They are both based on KDE 3.1 and dont ruin KDE. In fact they enhance it. Since they are magic discs they dont need to be installed, just download, burn, restart and enjoy.

There is always Fedora as well, which is the new Community Version of Red hat linux. They have become more KDE freindly.

The article only seems to mention using these distros as a means to introduce oneself easily to Linux. While this is an obvious use of Linux-on-CD type distros, it's by no means the only one. Personally, I've found these things to be fast enough for the difference to be barely perceptible from proper installs.

I've been using Knoppix for a while now and have found it to be really rather awesome. The possible uses are almost limitless and this will improve even more if the ability to write to NTFS volumes is ever introduced.

For example: Recently a friend managed to fuck up his Window XP install beyond repair. I burned him a copy of the ISO and Knoppix sorted it out in minutes. It's blisteringly fast, the hardware auto-detection has to be seen to be believed and the amount of software on that one disc is mindblowing. It's certainly worth keeping a CD copy handy...

However, I'm intrigued as to why MandrakeMove wasn't included in the article. I much prefer to use Knoppix because of its ability to mount hard drives, but MandrakeSoft have been very perceptive in their implementation of USB keys. By carrying around configuration options and personal data on a USB storage device, anyone equipped with a MandrakeMove disc can convert any CD-bootable PC around the world into an equivalent of their home desktop. Many people have predicted that this could become a lot more commonplace in the future where computer users would have to rely a lot less on a home workstation-centric lifestyle. I haven't investigated, but I would guess that persistence can be gained in Knoppix by somehow copying the contents of the ramdrive somewhere more permanent.

RISC OS is an operating system. ROM is a medium. In general, you can mix and match. See linuxbios, knoppix, etc.

And no, RISC OS is not a good solution if you want security ;-)

What finally got me to try Linux is when I read a post on Slashdot about Mepis, which, like Knoppix, is a Linux distribution on a bootable CD. While I'd been aching to give Linux a try for years, I never had a spare box to run it, and I wasn't about to wipe XP and all my stuff off my main computer. If you haven't heard about it, Mepis is a full linux install and suite of software that you can boot off a CD and play with, without wiping your existing operating system from your hard drive.

After trying Mepis for just a couple hours, I fell in love. Everything from my optical mouse to my Nvidia drivers to my keychain drive worked without any installation. I'm going to go on using XP on my current box, but I now know that the Linux desktop is indeed ready for prime time. When I upgrade to a new system next year, Microsoft won't get a penny. I'm going to buy a whitebox system, and get myself a good Linux distribution.

I don't care how polished Linux gets; I think the only way it's ever going to get exposure to general users is on Mepis/Knoppix style CD ROMs that let people take the OS for a test drive. I really think that the best way to bring Linux to the general public is to distribute as many ten-cent CD ROMs as you can to friends and family, so they can see for themselves that there's no need to pay the Microsoft tax on their next PC purchase.

The way I see it, overcoming Microsoft's hegemony requires working on two fronts. The first is building quality distributions that work plug-and-play with everything from printers to wireless cards. And the second front is the creation of full-featured bootable CD's that let people see -- on their own machine -- how great Linux has become.

Why not use KNOPPIX then? It's great at hardware detection, and if you install it on the HD it's basically a Debian "unstable" system, but with all your hardware configured for you!

If -unstable now has 2.6, will this mean that Knoppix will have 2.6 anytime soon? It'd be a dream for those of us who don't want to mess with our existing systems....

The Knoppix live CD distro comes with a script for installing to the hard drive that works pretty well, just go to a root console after booting off the cd and type 'knx-hdinstall'. It probably wouldn't be too hard to customize the disk so that it does this automatically.

This is indeed a good prediction. Bootable CDs, like Knoppix and Mandrake's new MandrakeMove,are just too irresistable, when used with a memory stick. I've tried the Knoppix one, and DAMN, it Just Works, even on a clapped-out old laptop with hardware issues. Lots of different kinds of knowledge workers can put their whole (current) work-lives on a little stick, and then just use whatever machine they can borrow time on. "Bulky" CDs? surely you have room in your briefcase / bag for one thin CD.

Try out KnoppMyth which is a Knoppix bootable CD customized to do just MythTV

Cecil and Dale really are doing a great job with this project. For some hardware this works 'right out of the box'. There is also an active forum on their website website

Between this site and MythTV's, it's really not bad to set up a working system fast.

Perhaps what's even better is that because knoppmyth is based on Knoppix (and thus on Debian) , it allows you to apt-get update to upgrade (most) of your software as needed. What isn't updated with an apt-get gets updated with Cecil and Dale' upgrade scripts as new versions come out (without touching your data). The only thing that I could think of that would make this cooler is for them to put together an apt repository on their own to track the project's changes.

Anyway... Do check it out.

--JP

I like the sound of this. How long till someone replicates its functionality, but based on a bootable GNU/Linux OS on the CD? Yes yes yes, I know about Knoppix and Slackware LiveCD - but I'm thinking of a much closer correspondence between the two editions. Ideally to the point where the user would neither know nor care whether they were using the Windows or the Linux version.

Their official site, (www.knoppix.org boldly states: "In the next few days, the European Parliament will decide about the legalisation and adoption of so-called "software patents" in Europe, which are already used by large companies in other countries to put competitors out of business. This can lead to the termination of many software projects such as KNOPPIX..."

So, I'm gonna stick to my own home-made rescue disks for the time being, tyvm.

What happened to using the Knoppix stuff in the Debian installer? I think the hardware detection of Knoppix really kicks ass.

The thing I think troubles new users most isn't the choise between package types - it's partitioning the harddisk and knowing what their hardware actually is. That last one can be helped by good hardware detection, but partitioning a disk is something else. What do you think would be best to make partitioning as easy as possible?

PS: I think Adaptec DirectCD can use CD-RWs as read-write discs. I wouldn't know, though, because I don't use Windows.

Theoretically. Those programs (packet writing in general) are buggy as hell.

Do you know any way (using Linux) to automatically download a tarball at logon from an FTP server and expand it into a user's home directory, then tarball the home directory back up and upload it back at logoff? I want to set something like that up with Knoppix so I can use my personalized Linux system anywhere without toting a second disk. I get 10 MB FTP/web space from Earthlink, so I can keep small stuff in the tarball.

I tried visiting
http://www.knoppix.org for the first time about 2 weeks ago and was greeted by bad news about European law in the works.

Lindows is great but what I'd really like to see is a choice: Knoppix, Dyne:bolic or Biatchux. These are all GNU/Linux live bootable CD-ROM based operating systems with automatic hard ware detection, which makes them particularly well suited for such a purpose. Knoppix is a general-purpose system, Dyne:bolic is for multimedia production and broadcasting and Biatchux is a data recov./forensics anal. and incident response tool, which is great if one buys a new hard drive because one's old one contains important data but the system/security failure has made it inoperative. I do really hope more hard ware vendors will employ my idea, which I have been promoting for quite some time now as someone who is sort of into operating systems in my institute. Lindows should prepare the new ground for professional operating systems. This is great news indeed. All we have to worry about is making sure there will be no hard drives with Microsoft operating systems preinstalled, but Microsoft is a convicted illegal monopolist, so they wouldn't be able to do it anyway, thanks to DoJ verdict. Great news and a very interesting article.

Seriously, this is a good idea. But I don't think Knoppix is the way to go. I can't even access their site, because they're still protesting software patents in Europe.

Talk about inconveniencing the choir. The only people who go to knoppix.org are hard core linux geeks like me, who are already sympathetic to their cause. All they're doing is pissing me off and making me go to Gentoo for my liveCD needs.

I know I'm being trolled, but I just can't restrain myself...

The current KNOPPIX website just alludes to the general political reaction against software patents in Europe. Knoppix was part of the protest movement. There is a link to the normal website embedded in the text.

There are no specific software patent issues with Knoppix.

Surely the best thing to do with that domain is to redirect it to www.debian.org? Or maybe knoppix.org at a pinch.

It is a CDROM live file system distribution with an amazing hardware detection and driver base. Basing a bootable game on it would make it run on pretty much every PC currently available.

Kiwaiti

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

I use my old 486 as a printer stand. Doubles as a print server...

Voice recognition also blows - I'd rather type. I type faster than speak to the computer and have it understand me. This tech is still a pat pat"That's nice dear" technology. I just can't take it seriously. I'm sure people who can't type find it useful, but I don't really.

Amen to that. Voice recognition is overrated, AFAIK. Sure, it'd be nice and all, but typing isn't that great a deal.

And why the hell are floppies still used, someone, please kill the floppy - the usb "keychain" is a great replacement, especially with regards to price per mb now.

A friend of mine who is considering buying a new PC was aghast when I told him not to bother with a floppy drive. He insists they are useful, often for booting DOS to rescue a b0rken windows install. Of course, I would just use this to fix a b0rken windows install (is that a redundant statement??).

You'll find it here. Although many find this a nicer path.

It's called Knoppix Just put in the CD, reboot, and there you are, a full running Linux distro, and if they get scared they can just reboot. It doesn't change anything on the machine.

I tried it awhile back, and right off it found everything, and I connected to the 'net with no hassles. I actually like it better than my current distro, mandrake.

-cp

The perception is that linux is too difficult for most non-geeks. Reality is different. Winxp is preinstalled. Suse's desktop edition has less hardware issues (signed drivers anyone) and an easier install than winxp - knoppix boots into a full OS from cd.

1. Tries to sell you service to something that's completely open and can be reproduced by anyone or
2. someone who tries to sell you a black box that's constantly changing and requires just as much or more service than 1.

Finally, you must trust yourself. Free software is easy to try out, though it may require more effort in the short run. If you feel like it's time to "upgrade" your operating system, try dropping a knoppix CD and judge what people are saying for youself.

Well, you could always bring a Knoppix CD to the lab and keep your home directory and personal settings on a USB Keychain type device. Instant personalized Linux workstation wherever you go. Of course, your university may not allow this, but what they don't know . . .

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

Redhat 5.2 was a much older distibution, compared to today's stuff, Similar in to windows 3.1 with windows 2000. There wasn't much available when windows 3.1 came out, and many people said, "I'll never move away from dos, the applications for windows just aren't there."

Fast Forward to today.

Most people wouldn't touch DOS anymore (Most Slashdot users exempted from that), and the application base is there now for windows.

On the linux side most modern distros (Redhat 8/9) (Mandrake 9.1) (Suse 8.2) All include more applications than you could ever need. Need a word Processor, You've got 3, same with spreadsheets. File Managers, Got a few of them, Games, Lots of small ones, and If you want the better ones, You can use most of them through wine. and even a few Games have a native linux version Unreal Tournament, UT 2K3, Quake. I Run Warcraft 3 though winex, and it works great.

As for Development, it comes with all the development tools you could need, 2 different SQL Based Databases (mysql, Postgresql), a Very nice IDE (Kdevelop), Photo Editors (The GIMP).

And the list is only getting longer.
You probably remember having trouble getting most hardware to work, That's a thing of the past as well, It's a rare case for me to install Linux, and have to manually configure hardware. Much better than my luck was ever with windows.

All in all, linux has improved a lot over the years, and Is worth a try again.
For something you can try out without committing yourself, Try Knoppix(mentioned a few times before) It includes an Amazing amount of applications.

Having RTFA and most of the comments, I'm a bit baffeled by the slasdot community today. Even I see this not as a article in how to use Linux or anything, but more as the sort of commentary that you can read on page three of most computermagazines these days. Saying things like "we knew that" and "is this news" actually misses the point, as he isn't speaking to those who already uses Linux but rather to those who still sees Windows as the only operating system out there. He isn't preaching to the choir my friends, he is preaching to the heatens, like myself.

The article / editorial / comment is more of a key than a crowbar... it may wet peoples appetite for the 'free*' OS they can get from their nerdy friends - even if the setup can be more of a hazzle than Windows is (well, than Windows can be; I used several hours patching up my spare PC yesterday after upgrading to XP). As such, I would say this is a good little article. He mentiones several of the pros of Linux, a few of the drawbacks, points out that it isn't a scary thing to try and that it is realivelty easy to do. He even adds a numer of links to distros, info on opensourse and the Linux Newbie Administration Guide... The only thing he don't add is the URL to knoppix so people could try Linux without having to change anything on their 'puter.

*) However you want to define 'free' as far as Linux go...

"These new live CDs finally give us the chance to introduce Linux to the masses."

*Cough*karmawhore*cough*

Sorry, this is not going to get Linux out to the masses.

1.) Playing around with the XBOX on a fuzzy TV is not going to impress people to the point of installing a new OS.

2.) If they've got an XBOX, they're likely a gamer. They're not going to dump Windows for Linux. Bad audience to target.

3.) More people have PCs than XBOXs, so why target a niche product anyway?

" Recently I emailed dozens of my friends, and I will attempt to introduce them to Linux in a way thats safe, with these new CDs you dont have to actually install Linux."

I have a better idea, use Knoppix. (Slashdot also recently had an article about Knoppix MAME which comes with MAME...) You burn an ISO, leave the Knoppix CD you just burned in your drive, reboot computer, wait for a minute and Linux comes up. No fuss. No installation. Completely useful.

Here's the best part: Knoppix can access NTFS. So, the big bonus here is that if anybody ever fries their Windows system, they can just pop this disc in and get back to their files. Heck, if they really feel like tinkering with it, it's like having their workstation on a CD. Bitchin.

"People are going to read this and think i'm some kinda Linux zealot...."

Actually, I was thinking karma whore. ;)

"... or even get Linux to run on the PS2."

It's there, but it's not free.

oh, you mean cygwin. or maybe knoppix

640x480x8 - huh? Where did that come from? On most distros, you're given a choice to the color depth and resolution settings when setting up the system. In addition, most distros also autodetect the maximum refresh rate that your monitor can handle, and then sets X11 to just below that value. As far as asking the IT director, maybe not, but someone at a level of authorization to make that change. Before we locked the setting down, we frequently got calls about a user's monitor that'd had been overclocked and consequently destroyed - because they changed a setting (resolution, refresh rate, or both) that they not only didn't understand, but never needed to be changed in the first place.

It's clear you haven't installed a recent release of any Linux distro in the past few years. I strongly recommend you try Knoppix - it runs completely from CD, making no changes to the disks in your system.

Linux is far from rotting - have you seen projects like LTSP? I know entire school districts, and even a few companies that have converted all of their desktop systems to that. Linux is turning out to be a great desktop OS for business environments (finally, a stable OS which is easy to centrally maintain/update, configure, and secure - and not only that, but it stays secure - minus your occasional buffer overflow, which happens on any OS anyway). Though I'd still refrain from trying to switch grandma over, it cant run her cross-stitch program, yet...

Linux and OSS are a community - products that come from the likes of Microsoft are a product, and only that. There are far too many geeks out there (me included), that will do whatever reasonably possible to keep that community alive - it's our livelihood, our hobby, and to some of us, or lives... We're not going anyway anytime soon, if anything we're still growing quite rapidly - thanks in part to the US economy, and dwindling IT budgets. Of-course, having damn good software doesnt hurt either :-)

Good call, Knoppix will mean not having to install anything and still access the underlying filesystem to save programs.

For the book though, just point them to How to Think Like a Computer Scientist. It's an excellent tutorial on Python for beginners.

So to answer the question above, what's required to teach programming? A 50 cent CD with Knoppix, a computer and an internet connection. Problem solved. That's a wrap folks! See you next post.

Good call, Knoppix will mean not having to install anything and still access the underlying filesystem to save programs.

For the book though, just point them to How to Think Like a Computer Scientist. It's an excellent tutorial on Python for beginners.

So to answer the question above, what's required to teach programming? A 50 cent CD with Knoppix, a computer and an internet connection. Problem solved. That's a wrap folks! See you next post.

Uh, Knoppix has had that latest stuff (KDE 3.1, new kernel, etc.) for some time now.

In case you didn't know, Knoppix is Debian based and has some awesome hardware auto-detection utilities.