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Knoppix for Rapid Desktop Deployment
heretic108 writes "From first boot to full desktop in 20 minutes! Knoppix has shot into the spotlight as a GNU/Linux distro suitable for demonstrating quality Open Source Software, standing out for its ability to self-configure itself into a vast range of hardware, and to run entirely off a CD boot without interfering with any existing system setup. That, plus its fat catalogue of pre-installed desktop software. But OSS enthusiast David McNab has poked a bit deeper, and found that Knoppix can install itself to disk, resulting in a completely configured GNU/Linux desktop system, ready to use, in 20 minutes, hassle free. CD no longer needed! Best of both worlds - use as a GNU/Linux demo disk, and if the user likes it, it's a snap to install permanently. I can't think of any distro that comes close to this, for ease and speed of setup. I found McNab's short Knoppix Installation Howto which gives a very brief and easy guide. With this rapid setup ability, Debian-based Knoppix makes a great contribution to the catalogue."
No Blue Screen of Death? No individual user licenses? No aborted installs? No minesweeper? Who actually would use this newfangled thing?
---
When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
So, is this kind-of the same idea as the net-bsd bootable cd-rom that boots into KDE,which demonstrates teh power and flexibility of BSD-licensed software?
if it is so wonderful, how come other distributions not use similar hardware detection? we have seen linux distros go in and out, people complain and complain about hardware detection, but we have yet to see one of the bigger distributions adopt a system similar to what knoppix is doing. i mean the worst thing that could happen is could detect the wrong hardware (tough, but possible) and you will have to remove the modules. but otherwise, seems like a win win situation.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
I have been using knoppix for months. I know this has been out for atleast a year and it is the greatest thing I have ever used.
one exception ofcourse is mandrake, but i have tried it, and well, it doesn't seem to work that well. perhaps the newer versions are better.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
This might be a bit off-topic, but hey, at least I'm not wasting your time with an Ask Slashdot:
Can someone point me towards a live-CD that includes Flash, RealPlayer, and the ability to play as many multimedia files as possible? OpenOffice and some kind of Gecko browser are also required.
The reason is that Windows is just not cutting it on my girlfriend's computer. She's having all sorts of weird technical problems so I've decided something needs to be done. Unfortunately, my Debian is so wacked out and constantly tweaked into a semi-usable state that she doesn't trust Linux. So what I need is something she can use for a few weeks -- still accessing her docs on her Windows partition -- until she's sold.
How much is one of these frontpage /. ads? Please contact me, I may be interested in buying one.
Just my own little story how Knoppix helped me.. =)
My fiancee was volunteered to teach a class in algorithm design and c++ programming at the highschool she teaches at (for honors credit) -- the problems, though, were numerous.
She had to deal with:
1) NO funds available for purchasing of any programming utilities
2) Computer ADMIN not allowing her to install ANY programming software (borland freeware, DJGPP, etc) to disk
3) NOT allowing students to write (even temporary files) to the hard drive...
We looked at a LOT of different ways to handle these problems. Finally we decided that maybe using a linux livecd and having a disk with gcc/g++ for each student. Looked at a few different types that were mentioned on slashdot but NONE seemed to work well... until we saw a VERY old article that some user mentioned Knoppix.. went to it, d/l'ed it, burned to disk, popped it in and rebooted...
*WOW*
Knoppix comes fully loaded with office utilities, games (PLENTY of games), graphics software, but most importantly DEVELOPMENT software already on it. We were in love with it (in truth, my other box is still running it from cd just bc we liked it =) -- even more important was that it ran without the need for ANY files or ANY changes to the hard drive.
It discovered all devices hooked to my computer and actually had them working (AS WELL as the internet connection from "straight to cable modem" or "over network using ICS" setups we have at my house).
She took it to her school, popped it in, rebooted the computers (after fidgeting with bios to allow boot from cd, laugh) and QUICKLY came up with the Knoppix desktop. It certainly didnt take more than a min or so to bootup...
Most surprising thing was that for a "ran from cd" linux it was REMARKEBLY fast. Lets just say I was VERY impressed with Knoppix and recommend it for ANY new person. Without the threat of "ruining their computer," they can just pop in knoppix to try out linux... if they hate it, pop it out and its finished.
So in the end, fiancee's school didnt have to shell out money, didnt "screw up the computers" (sigh), have a setup for students to write and compile programs, and exposed students (and teachers) to Linux. I would say the entire situation was a big WIN =)
Windows XP ... "first boot to full desktop" in 18 minutes.
Knoppix is a GREAT distro. I regularly give it to people to try out Linux. It also makes a great recovery disk. I can go anywhere and pop it into a PC with a CD-ROM drive and it boots giving me all the tools I need.
/mnt/WINNT to /mnt/GoodDisk. Have a nice day.
What? Your Windows 2000 server's dynamic disk has crashed, again? No problem. Insert Knoppix. Copy
... is the sheer number of packages included on a *single* CD ROM. It's incredible. (Plus, they tend to be quite recent versions, and with some programs, like the excellent and promising Scribus, that's important because progress is rapid.)
Also, if you want to show someone the sheer variety of free and Free browsers available with Linux, Scribus has konqueror, mozilla, dillo, not to mention text-based ones as well.
It's an amazing distro -- demoware that really works. Anecdote: I have used Knoppix, from the CD, as my only OS for several days when using a borrowed laptop on which I could not politely do an OS swap. Except a slight slowness with the CD up-and-down-spinning, it was hard to tell I wasn't just using a recent Debian system installed normally.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
2nd instance of "Scribus" in above post should of course be "Knoppix." Scribus is not emacs.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Have you tried Knoppix? Did you read the article? I would think that Knoppix would fit your bill perfectly.
Did I just get trolled?
Sounds quite cool actually, this is just the sort of thing that some people (my boss) need to be shown. Differs a little from SUSE live-eval if it can be installed. And the great thing is I can just hand my boss a cd and tell him to try it.
Hopefully windows problems will be a thing of the past for me soon.
except it used the OSS sound system and the OSS module for my soundcard does not work...if it used ALSA I would be very happy.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
One really neat use of this would be to bundle VMWare into the CD dist so that you could actually drop the CD into a machine you don't trust (maybe your employer's?) to be free of keystroke loggers, etc.
Use Linux for any "private" work you want to do, use encryption tools (ssh, tunneling, etc.) to get out your corporate firewall to a trusted machine, and then simply run your other operating system inside VMWare for doing your work.
Does Knoppix make it easy to add new things into the cd image?
How much is one of these frontpage /. ads?
175,000 banner impressions for $1,000.
Given the title, Offtopic moderation is Redundant and will be M2ed as such.
I'm not normally a debian zealot, and by me using the term zealot, you can figure out what I think of people who constantly tell me that I'm wrong for using redhat and mandrake. That having been said, I've really got to respect this. Well done.
Personally, I don't care about having 10 different editors, but I'm sure some people do. I can almost live entirely off of the redhat 8.0 personal desktop (I have other machines to compile on), save for the lack of mp3-ability out of the box (freshrpms, I love you) and dvd-ability (again, go freshrpms). But the ability to do something like this, be able to just install it on to a hard drive, type a single command for updates, no registering or anything, and continue on, is very nice.
I think this years install fest will see a lot more debian installs than it will redhat or mandrake because of this.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
3) NOT allowing students to write (even temporary files) to the hard drive...
You probably just broke that rule by booting Knoppix, which uses a swap file on any machine with less than 128 MB of RAM.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There's another Debian-based bootable distro, called LNX-BBC. It is only 50 megs, but you can still install Debian from it and apt-get all the packages you want.
http://www.lnx-bbc.org/
but got confused by the debian logo. So is knoppix a commercial distri?? In that case this is def the ad of the day...
Wow, for once I'm ahead of the crowd. I finished downloading the latest iso about 2hrs before this was posted here ... how long before the Knoppix site is Slashdotted ?
t
Is it only me who misread the article header?
A rapid desktop deployment for Debian system is not "news that matter", a working rapid desktop development system - a competitor to Kylix can be that news...
20 minutes? Bah. My old vintage 1975 Sol-20 boots SOLOS from ROM in under a second. I can install a new OS ROM in seconds, it is conveniently provided on a ROM cart that pops in and out of a slot in the back. I can load BASIC or ASM-80 from Cassette Tape in under 2 minutes.
Yeah, yeah, before you mod this down, just think a sec, I'm only trying to show how ludicrous this "time to first boot" is, as a measure of an OS.
Could someone please tell me if there is a MiniCD (185Mb) version of knoppix 'round ?
TIA
It's come in handy a couple of times, like when my hard drive flaked out. I talked my non-techie wife through setting up KPPP and KMail over the phone so she had internet access. (Fortunately, it was just a loose cable)
I've used DemoLinux before that, as well as the SUSE demo CD, but Knoppix is much nicer. The only feature I miss is DemoLinux's ability to anchor part of the file system to the hard drive...
All in all, a very nice distribution.
I've just gotta say, thanks Slashdot. This is what I've been looking for.
One of the major reasons I was very reluctant to try Linux out (I'm a dedicated Win2K admin) was that it would require me to re-partition a disk for an ext3 filesystem.
Well, seeing as how each and every one of my drives are NTFS Dynamic Volumes, there's no chance in hell that Linux is going to be able to read (or even repartition) them, and neither will most other software. So, it's a total wipeout if I wanted to try it.
I'm downloading the ISO of this right now; I can get a chance to use Linux without *installing* Linux this way. In essence, what I've wanted for a long time.
Yeah, but it comes with 2GB of apps, boots into KDE, GNOME or WindowMaker, and even sets itself up as a PXE boot network server for diskless machines.
:v)
To be honest, it also impresses the pants off Windows users and is very likely to convert them to Open Source software. There they are used to Windows products and have been told Linux is too hard. Then along comes this CD, they insert it, boot, and a fully-fledged Linux app with OpenOffice, Mozilla, network, sound and lots of toys rises before them without them having to type or do *anything*.
That's why I put it on the NZ PC World cover disk.
Vik
I think a very important and under-valued use of this is as a rescue disk.
Sure other distros have bootable CD's, but they are only partly usable. This thing seems to have a bunch of stuff that will make recovery much easier.
Who knows... I'll try it out and see. Too bad some of the older systems can't boot off CD (often those are the ones you need to recover!)
Is pretty bad - why not "Suck My Knoppix"?
I only have a 100% NTFS formatted drive. Linux cannot reliably write to NTFS. I don't wish to reformat or resize partitions. Can I run Knoppix directly from the CD and use a big RAM disk or something?
Yes, Windows sucks. If it's having that many problems, see if you can roust up a copy of Win2000 or WinXP. But if you force your girlfriend to use Linux, she will probably end up frustrated and hating it (and maybe even hating you).
Then, in a few years, when Linux is ready for the desktop (if that happens) then she won't want to try it.
If you really think Windows sucks too much for her to use, maybe you should look into getting her a Mac. Forcing nontechnical people to use Linux is not the way to win friends, or spread good feelings for the operating system.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
I got Knoppix onto the cover CD of PC World in New Zealand and I hear there is a possibility it may go on the Australian version - write encouragement to the Ed and ask if it can be had from the Kiwis (the answer will be yes, I guarantee it :).
:v)
We had to cut it down to 350MB to fit the sponsor's Windows games and so forth on the CD too (thanks Eaden at Opentech) so no OpenOffice, but the reader response we got was incredible. See this and search for "Knoppix" for the feedback.
Vik
After reading the comments here Knoppix has just become my default Christmas gift to friends and family. The opportunity to quickly and easily expose new users to Linux without altering their current environment is a magnificent opportunity to "spread the gospel."
:)
I'm planning to bundle the CD with two sheets of paper, one showing how to start and use it and explaing that it won't interfere with the ordinary function of the computer concerned and the other David McNabb's HDD install HOWTO.
Then in January I'm going to apply for a position in the marketing department of AOL, I'll have all the required skills
No Knoppix does not require a hard drive at all. Inserting the CD and booting Knoppix creates a RAM disk for swap space and symlinks to the rest of the OS on CD. Knoppix runs entirely from RAM and the CD. Knoppix does not touch your hard disk!!!!
:(
However, Knoppix does a great job of detecting all present disks and sets up the FSTAB to allow you to access any of the disk partitions. This is read-only acess by default. Knoppix creates desktop icons for each of the disk partitions. Should you need to access data on the hard disk(read-only by default) simply click the icon and Knoppix auto-mounts the partition, ext2/3, fat, fat32, NTFS, what have you.
Knoppix is awesome and WELL worth the download! Although I suspect that the mirrors are being Slashdotted right now.
Has anybody tried this install yet?
How easy to install is it compared to the progeny installer, the new Debian graphical installer and the old, infamous, text installer?
Could this be the easiest Debian install ever (one can dream)?
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
There is BOCHS, but it emulates every x86 instruction, rather than being optimized for specifically running an OS. The developers (in the FAQ) do not recommended for the purpose you intend. I have not tried it.
Plex86 touts itself as *the* free (as in speech and beer) alternative. I have not tried this either.
Connectix makes Virtual PC, which is not free. I have not tried it.
Gentoo is neat - but if you compile it all...
I'm on day three of install and config - Single 733MHz+ 1GB RAM and a 1.5Mb net connection!
Thought I'd finally dig into this guy, 'cos I was intrigued by out-of-the-box EVMS.
Looks like my next install will be Knoppix. Just to keepa broad perspective on things!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Has any /.ers installed Knoppix on a laptop? Hopefully w/ wireless? Redhat8 and Mandrake9 keep dropping packets using my wireless connection and it's more than a little frustrating not to even be able run apt-get update or up2date. I tried my trusty Libranet 2.7 but it hangs every time on pcmcia while booting and never completes booting.
This guy is way out there
Some other stuff it does well - it'll store swap, config and home directory on files in the first windows harddisk with enough space it can find. That means you can in fact use it as your primary OS if you're happy with not being able to add new software and slow bootup times. You can reconfigure, write docs and so on, and it'll all be saved to disk.
Every copy of the magazine had a bootable Linux distro (with some apps removed for space). There were some very positive comments from first time users.
Two months before the PC World distro I downloaded Knoppix and tried it out on my 2 PC's here at home. On my daughters PC it detected everything. On my PC it would not detect sound but hey, I had a great time discovering Linux for the first time. Still couldn't get my cable modem to work but I know I can one day. I wouldn't have tried Linux otherwise.
Now I have downloaded 2 other distro's of Linux. I have entered play mode due to my experience with Knoppix. Time to set up a server at home.
I have a new work opportunity at a clients office. I need to bring a my own PC workstation. It needs to be runnning a web server (Apache) and database (mysql) for an idea we want to develop. I am going to build a Linux box that runs on their windows network. The fact I am even trying this is due to playing with Knoppix. I may even use Knoppix for this as I know it can be run from a HD also.
The weathers here - Wish you were beautiful
Check out Knoppix. It has Galeon. It was up to Gnome 2.0, although KDE is the default desktop, but recently Knopper fell back to an earlier version of Gnome because he was having a lot of problems with 2.0. I would expect him to return to 2.x once the bugs are worked out.
The only thing it doesn't have is Flash and Real Player because of licensing issues with those products.
I loved Knoppix the first time I used it. No more partition choices, distributions choices, updates, etc...
I just download the ISO every week or so! Instant upgrade!
The problem is that it doesn't support my language and keyboard on the boot loader (PT).
I tried searching for the source code in the knoppix site so that i could change it, but didn't find any source code for the boot loader options!!!
Maybe i just don't know how to search the web...
Does anybody know how to change the bootup screen?
"Knoppix creates a RAM disk for swap space"
Excuse me? Aren't swap space supposed to be for when you don't have enough RAM, so that you transfer a part of your RAM to the swap on the HDD?
Very useful that, to transfer part of your RAM to the swap on the RAMdisk to save some space.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
I just heard about Knoppix a couple weeks ago, and tried it. I like it, but its so slow on my crappy CD-ROM on my old p200
So now I can finally install it to a drive yay.
One question though: My monitor on my old pc sucks, it cant handle high resolutions, so i used alt+ctrl+- to reduce the resolution to 800x600 which works, but the desktop area is still larger, so when you move the mouse to the side,the desktop scrolls and whatnot. How do you change the desktop resolution??
It would be really slick if computer magazines started including a free Knoppix CD. People could try out Linux for the first time without touching their current installation.
If you don't change your hardware, it could work, couldn't it?.
I'm quite impressed at this distro, and I do realize how hard it is to autodetect the wide range of hardware that Linux supports. However, I still find it humerous that back in the day, the time it took to install BeOS was almost entirely determined by the speed of your CD-ROM drive :)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
And she's already wasted days thanks to proprietary formats.
Huh? Exactly how do "days" get wasted because of a proprietary format?
If you're going to lie, at least make it plausible.
Try it some time, and see if you can read your hard drive.
Somehow I left out the "read-write" in grandparent. Sorry.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Then along comes this CD, they insert it, boot, and a fully-fledged Linux app with OpenOffice, Mozilla, network, sound and lots of toys rises before them without them having to type or do *anything*.
Then they want to install a new application or, heaven forbid, a permanent install. And then they realize all the Linux rumors -are- true: it's generally a pain in the ass. I hope permanent distro makers take HUGE lesson from Knoppix, but for now, Knoppix is a tease that doesn't reflect the realities of a full-time Linux (read: permanent install) user. It shows potential, and nothing more.
She works on the thesis both from home and the library. Maybe she's not paying attention when the format conversion boxes pop up but for whatever reason she's shown up at either place and realised that the latest copy is in a format that can be read at only one of the locations. As a result, she either has to merge diffs or find something else to do until she can get back to a converter.
I've always used windows, just because I've never had the time to setup, learn, and play with linux although I've always wanted to. I am now posting this in Konqueror running Knoppix. I burned the ISO, booted from the CD, and I was running linux in under 5 minutes. Linux is now officially easier to run than Windows. I'm incredibly impressed.
knoppix sounds promising but there are a few inital questions that come to mind with regards of using it as your main OS:
If it boots and runs off CD, does that mean I can't use my cd drive?
If I change some settings, won't they be lost when I reboot?
Lastly, what package manager does it use? If I'm not mistaken, knoppix is based on debian .. does apt-get work by default? (as someone who uses debian mainly because of apt, this would be great)
I have looked through the knoppix FAQ, but didn't see answers to any of these. Although I will probably try knoppix regardless just cause it sounds so cool :)
Not a problem, because there is a Preferences option in Knoppix. With it you can save your configuration choices and any files of your own, or just one or the other, by saving that request on a floppy and on boot you just type "knoppix floppyconf" and everything is there. It means there is only one floppy to worry about. Your work survives. If you don't do that, there is nothing saved, including your screensavers, icon choices, background, etc. But with the Preferences option, you can save it all if you like or just some of it.
It's truly wonderful. If you must have a Windows box because you have a pointyheaded boss, and I do, it lets you use your operating system of choice without annoying anyone in charge by doing permanent things. But it's permanent to you, if you like. Only downside is, you can't play CDs, but I don't do that when working anyway.
I've personally used Knoppix off and on in my C++ class at school. All the computers run Win98 along with Borland something, anti-virus, and some sort of lock down software. With everything they have on there it takes an extensive amount of time to even compile a simple program. I seem to make everyone a little jealous since I can compile any program in a fraction of a time it takes them, besides a screen/vim/gcc setup without X is much more productive then the Borland crap. On another note, when I got braver, I used parted on the knoppix cd to resize the windows partition and installed a copy of debian. I didn't install and bootloader and just use a floppy to boot it up. When the school year is over i just resize the partition back and no one will ever know. :)
~ j campbell
Linuxin is another Debian-based Linux live-cd with an installer (log in as user:install / pass:linuxin)
http://linuxin.paislinux.net
1. Yes, you can't, unless you read the original story and follow instructions to make Knoppix permanent.
2. No. You can save. There is preferences option to save or not, by using one floppy and booting up and at boot prompt type "knoppix floppyconf". Everything is then saved. There is a list of choices of what to save and you choose which settings you want to save and which you don't. You can update at will by just putting the floppy back in and saving again.
3. I don't know. Haven't tried yet.
After reading the nicely written article, I realised it mentioned Mandrake Control Centre. Could this be how it is so good at autodetection??
Actually you should be able to (assuming you have access) convert the iso to a mountable filesystem. Add or subtract what's needed (keeping total size to one cd) and converting back to a burnable iso.
A bootable Linux CD like Knoppix can be very handy when you are stranded out of reach of a Linux box.
.cab and setup.exe files lying around in c:\windows\options, so I reinstalled Win98 from that. That is how I am able to post this message to Slashdot.
Case in point: I went away this weekend to a fairly remote part of the north Devon countryside, armed only with a Win98-powered Toshiba laptop with built-in modem (and an external modem). I hoped that I'd be able to dial up to my ISP (handy emergency ISP for those in Britain: 0845 206 6050, username totalserve, password totalserve), download the Putty ssh client and read my mail. I was expecting some maybe-important messages.
In one of the bizarre screwups that occasionally reminds me why I normally use Linux and not Windows, I could dial up and ping things but not make HTTP connections to any host. I tried to investigate but there wasn't much I could do. Definitely a software problem (like I said, DNS and pinging were fine), and hard to investigate with only vanilla Win98 tools.
Realizing this I remembered the Knoppix CD I had at home. If only I had brought it with me! So I telephoned home and spoke to my brother, asked him to find the CD ('what? you don't keep it in a case? won't it get scratched?' - no, CD cases are AFAICT superfluous) and post it to me. 'Stick it to a bit of card', I said, 'and post it to me first class'.
That was on Thursday evening and I knew that the CD could not arrive until Saturday - that's today. I thought it had failed to arrive, but it eventually got here late in the morning. Sure enough the disc was stuck on to an octogon of cut-out cardboard using a single strip of masking tape across the diameter. (That's the kind of rough yellow tape that doesn't stick on very hard.)
I eagerly peeled off the masking tape, it was a bit harder to remove than I had expected but I peeled off the tape up to the hole at the centre of the disc. Then I peeled from the centre towards the other edge - and instantly the tape ripped off and with it the silver backing of about a quarter of the CD. I'm left with just transparent plastic where the silver has peeled away. I know that CDs have insane levels of error correction, but of course it would be futile to try sticking the tape back again in roughly the same place and seeing if the CD still works. (I tried it anyway.)
Like that story where the last man on earth's glasses get smashed when he enters the library. That's the cliche that came to mind.
So the moral of the story is: Debian and Knoppix may be very stable and robust Linux distributions. But the CDs on which they are distributed are quite literally 'flaky'. Don't try sticking them on to things with tape!
Epilogue - I found that the Windows installation sensibly had the original
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
No, It not dead. Just read the mailing list if you want to see how "Alive" it really is.
They are redoing the entire file structure so that everything can be compiled from the source, and there will be no more binary files from other distros. They are also implementing a new downloadable packaging system called gar.
I have used it for the past 3 years, and very little needs updating.
-Bruce K.
I can run the CD based version on just about any PC EXCEPT the HP Omnibook 4150 - and thats the only reason that I cut the CD. Yes I did try all of the options.
Still on a no-name PC it looks great.
Semper ubi sub ubi
One of my acquaintances had a laptop he was looking to sell, which worked out well, since I was in the market for a laptop. The only snag was that it didn't work -- it wouldn't boot or install an OS. So I told him that I would come over and take a look at it -- sure enough, it seemed to have a hard drive problem -- easy enough to tell, because the hard drive made this funny noise every time it tried to spin.
Obviously it would have been stupid to buy the laptop at that time -- I didn't have a chance to make sure everything else was working, and didn't have a chance to demo it. So I just grabbed my Knoppix CD and popped it in. It worked perfectly the first time (of course). I got to test the whole system minus the hard drive, and run some hard drive checks while I was at it. Everything else in the computer was fine, so I told him that the hard drive was busted and that essentially disables the computer, but I could replace the hard drive.
So he says that his conscience "wouldn't be clear" if he sold me a broken computer -- so he offered to offload it for 300 bucks. Far be it from me to argue with him (in my poorness).
And that is how I saved around 700$ on a laptop (the 'puter usually costs around $1k on ebay).
Cheers,
~Tris!
-----[0_o]-----
We are not amused.
To test the new computer i was buying (and getting), i took my Knoppix CD along.
:)
I bought the box which caused the least trouble!
Knoppix was more than helpful
Voltaire: God is dead.
God: Voltaire is dead!
I will hope you still read this but its a bit after this was posted
I read all replies to my comments. It's a Slashdot messaging feature.
Students each have a disk that they have their source code on (they write the code to the disk). We compile onto the disk and the executable remains on the disk.
Wouldn't the temporary files created by the compiler exceed 1.4 MB, the capacity of a "high-density" 3.5 inch floppy disk? Or is one of the objectives of the course to optimize a compilation job for minimal size of intermediate files and of executable files?
And what does the grader do when he or she receives a disk that has bad sectors on it? Floppies tend to develop them rather quickly.
Will I retire or break 10K?
i would love to use this at my school to show them the power of linux, yada yada, but might have problems hosing hard drives, etc.
is there a way to configure it so that i can get a remote x session from my desktop in my classroom. i know i can init 3, and get it from there, but i would like to drop it in, and have it automagically get X. it would be an awesome sell.
or is this just a case of RTFM?
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Knoppix mentions that the system will run faster if it can create a swap partition on the drive of the computer it's installed on.
:-)
Why is it that swap space can't be used on an existing partition? It seems that it'd be to knoppix's advantage if it (optionally) allowed you to use an existsing FAT32/NTFS/EXT2 partition for temporary swap space while it runs.
I mean, Windows does this and look at how great it runs!
OK, I was just kidding with that last part, but I'd still like to know why this hasn't been done
I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
But like I said, I had this confused for the UT2K3 disc, so I was looking for that and couldn't find it. This is when I found out what probably most "avid" PC users experienced with Windows find out, and is probably the real #1 threat to Linux on the desktop - the fact that it's all very different, and compared to Windows, difficult. I mean, with a Mac versus Windows you of course know there are differences in things like interface and file system structure, but after some work you've got it down. The way Linux uses and organizes files befuddled me, and I can suddenly see why most people are turned off by Linux - it doesn't seem worth it to learn a whole new paradigm when the one you're most comfortable with is used by 90+% of the world and (from a business standpoint) is more profitbale anyway.
So perhaps what is needed next is a good "So you've only ever used Windows..." guide. (and if one already exists, feel free to point to it)
Schnapple
:)
yeah yeah they are huge. but it only took me about 5hours to compile gnome2 without patying strict attention.
The obligatory post each time Debian comes up on Slashdot. If more and more people post this every time, then MAYBE the Debian project leaders would pull their heads out of their asses long enough to bring sid into the modern world.
Naah, I don't believe that one either.
I have to say, this seems a far more healthy approach to 'trusted computing' than the one M$ and Intel are pushing...
--serendipity. Just so happens I received a knoppix 3.1 cd. This afternoon I tried it out, loaded fine, cool. Check the menu, lotta kde apps. Tried to get online, normal external US robotics serial port modem. nada. 2.5 hours later I shut that thing off. I have yet to be able to get online with that kppp thing, read every HOWTO I could find, adjusted stomped chomped and romped everything they said to try, zip, nada, more or less useless to me without being able to surf with it.
I know one million guys will now say they get online flawlessly, it's automagically delicious that all they do is use thought control, that it washes their car and does their laundry too,yada, yada, yada, but it's been my experience the kppp dialer just slap don't work for way too many people. I've tried it before on mandrake and on redhat, it never_dialed_one_time. I cruised around and googled, it's a common problem it appears, goto any forum where folks having trouble with it, they get told to read the same manuals that say the same 4 things to try that's it. Phooie.. too bad, too, it has a ton of apps on their, but internet connectivity is job #1 as far as I am concerned with any modern OS release. They can skip the eye candy and the 689 other apps if the net isn't there and EASILY. Keyword EASILY. this is 2002, there is zero reason to do nothing besides clik and fill in the blank and get online with the connection of your choice anymore, it just shouldn't be this weird and rely on massive tweaking.
Gimme a GNOME based cd like this, with redhat's GUI dialer from 7.1 and 2 and I'll buy it. Yep, it ain't a purty dialer, but dadgum if finds your modem and sets it up and you hit connect and she dials out. And NOT the dialr wannabe from 8.0, I took that off my drive as well and put 7.2 back on, that sucks too.
This run from the cd is a great concept, I am just soured on kde apps now, not even gonna bother from this experience. next installzero any kde goes on my machine. Must have a good ten or 12 hours total trying to make kppp work total on different distros, that's enough, I got something that works and spend my time doing what I want to do. Not a coder here, so that's that..
I have been running Win2000 PRO. The one MS doesn't recommend for "consumers." (Consumers should use ME or XP).
It has been very stable on 3 machines over 2 years; I had NO crashes; on par with my NetBSD and other 'Nix boxes.
I just got a new machine that had XP Home Pre-Installed, and I've given it a test drive for the last 3 weeks.
Guess what, at least 1 crash a DAY! No wonder they didn't want consumers using 2000; Going from 98 or ME -> XP would be feel good for users; going from Win2000 -> XP wouldn't feel good!!
At least I have options if I need an OS that doesn't crash out; it's too bad MS hasn't given consumers that same choice!!
http://www.hawknest.com/
I was looking for the UT2K3 Demo LiveCD from Gentoo. I fired it up and ran it on my system. VERY impressive. Runs like a dream, and more importantly, it does what what Windows has done all along - it detected and used everything I had. I was online with DHCP, it knew my video card, everything.
Maybe I'm just a 'tard who didn't think of this earlier, but what a boon for game developers! "HERE you go! Just like your PS2, dump this CD (with live Linux filesystem & game of the week) in your PC and hit the power button..." Now, a REAL reason for game developers to develop for Linux! Control of the *PC* platform - no DLLs, MSIs, or DX crap to work with - THIS is the environment that your customer gets, every PC an Idrema with a live filesystem + app on CD. On the surface, it seems like a great leap back, but it appears that the benefits outweigh the fs overhead on each CD.
What a fsking GREAT idea! (Or am I missing something? Besides hardware, I mean, this is supposed to be somewhat tolerant in that regard, anyway.) It seems to work for Gentoo and Epic Games, anyway.
Carthago delenda est!
Knoppix doesn't recognize my Audigy card. Is there a driver for this on the CD or am I SOL?
Being a smartass is a much better thing than being the alternative.
I just discovered Knoppix a few weeks ago, and I must say I'm impressed. I've never had a Linux distribution install so cleanly and easily, self-configuring everything. So many apps are included, and the KDE desktop looks great. Other distributions have a long way to go to catch up to this piece of work, which is even more impressive considering it runs live from a CD. Knoppix is the perfect introdution to Linux for someone who just wants to check it out, but you can get real work done with it too. I've been using it to run my favorite Linux apps on my Windows laptop. It's been really handy. Now I want to give a copy to all my friends who have been wondering about Linux. Great work!
Haven't had one of those for aaaaages (and always on dodgy hardware). But you've got to admit, it is a lot more exciting (and informative, even the dumbest user knows the system has a problem!) than a nicely centered F0AD:4C696C6C message.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Another auto-configuring live CD is Cool Linux CD. It's based on Red Hat 7.3 with XFS support, uses IceWM, and contains OpenOffice, Mozilla, Opera, Sylpheed, Pan, Xchat, Licq, mplayer, xmms, and VMWare.
I wouldn't just hand it to a Windows user and say "try this". The hardware auto-detection works well enough, but you still have to login and start X manually. Since it uses RH's configurator, it will initially display the standard RH desktop while setting up then it restarts into IceWM. But once you've got it running and explain that there is no "Explorer" or "Start" button, it's dead simple.
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
Add its path to the plugins search list, click refresh, done.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I got Knoppix so that I didn't have to use hd space on my laptop. It works fine wtihout the nic, everthing is perfect. So I try booting with the nic in and blam, it freezes after detecting it. It detects it as the right model but when it tryes setting up eth0 it freezes up. Also does it if I put the nic in while alread booted up, text and gui. the nic is a D-Link DFE-670TXD Fast Etiernet 10/100 PCMCIA card. Any ideas?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
What month, if it is still on the news stands I'd be interested in buying a copy. Win98 user looking for 1st step to the far side. The other kind of !st Post
No. You can't look at my Sig; it's mine, and I'm not showing you.
I can't guarantee that this is the problem you're having, but the problem I got stuck on when first trying kppp was that I didn't explore enough of the tabs in the setup utility. Specifically (and please don't be mad if you have, it's just a thought), have you gone through the several choices for modem location, trying to dial after selecting each one? Like a lost object, always in the last place you look ...
:)
Since I've misplaced the power cord for my ThinkPad, this is being typed instead on my iBook, or I'd look at the kppp configuration better and try to remember the other hangups I had with it, but now it's been a while since I've had to configure kppp other than changing the phone number
kppp is really a nice dialer once you have it going.
Tim
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
For those of you who are interested in burning this puppy to a CDROM. The ISO is 698MB, so if you do not have a CDROM that will do Overburn you will NOT be able to make the CD from the ISO
I don't know where the state of bootable USB keys is at, but if you could boot it off a USB key (with 256MB or 512MB) that would be cool. Yeah, the older machines don't allow you to do that, but can you imagine how cool it would be? And you'd be able to write data as well.
I just grabbed the latest .iso, and it's not wanting to fit on the CD-R. (I figured those have a standard size...) Has anyone actually managed to burn one of those on a CD-R, and if so, how?
I know it costs more (esp. looking at purchases vs. existing, "free" floppy drives), but CD writers are no longer expensive, and make a much more durable medium for temporary storage. External USB CD-RWs can be had for $75, less if you look around ...
.... floppies = annoyance and data loss.
With just a couple of these in a classsroom (annoying as it would be to have to hook them up much), you could have something nicer than floppies
If you should try this, I suggest putting a small USB extension on end of the cable towards the computer, and plugging into each machine only the end of the extension, to reduce wear and tear.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Perhaps a Windows install might have succeeded. Is that damaging enough for you? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
http://download.at.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/3.0.4/De bian/woody/
EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) is a vector graphics format: PNG, JPEG and BMP are pixel-based (raster?). They *aren't* the same!
You would have to be pretty stupid to start saving graphs and so forth in PNG/JPEG in a a document.
http://blog.grcm.net/
I'm probably late to post in this thread, but if anybody knowledgeable reads this...
I tried Knoppix to see if Linux would work on an old laptop that I recently picked up. Very nice, though it didn't ge the sound going. But the hard drive install is intriguing. It's based on Debian, which is famously hard to install. Once Debian's in place, though, it's said to be very easy to maintain, using apt-get. I use Mandrake now and while urpmi is supposed to help, it's no apt-get! Indeed it still leaves me in dependency hell more often than not, when trying to install a package not included in the base distro.
So would Knoppix on HD be a nice shortcut to a working Debian system? If so, it could be a killer tool for the Debian world, and I could try it on my "spare" partition (where I last had Gentoo, a nice hack in is own right but talk about hard to install...).
This thing is fantastic. It's amazing the things you can fit into 50 megs - basically every command line program you'd want except Emacs and man pages, plus minimal X support.
Geez, only one more zero and they could have fit in emacs too....
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Note: not only Knoptic but all linux distro, it is still not supported to write to NTFS file systems.
http://go.to/mamamia
I am using Knoppix right now.
It found my both my obscure NIC card and obscure sound card. Browsing NTFS works great. (I sure hope it is not writing to NTFS!)
It's amazing - you can even turn a computer without a hard drive into a dedicated web browsing node.
I am still trying to figure out how to get better than 1024x768 resolution on my NVidia card under Knoppix. Is it possible?
Can you make this run from/boot from a USB-keychain (those that has uptowards 1 GB of flash-RAM)? Okay, the ones I've seen are USB 1.1, so it's slow as hell, but at least you'd be able to have easy writable storage, and once you had it running you could store your preferences.
:-/
And why yes, I did submit this as an "ask slashdot" with a lot more detail, but it was rejected
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Ever wanted to buy a laptop, but were afraid to dump out 1500$+ dollars becuase you were in doubt that all the features would be supported in linux? If you aren't going to install anything on the equipment, I doubt you'll hear an objection from your compusa, bestbuy, etc.. when you aren't going to install anything, yet able to demo it there in the store.
I wonder why the handhelds don't have a mini-cdrom drive in them, hmm...
Those handhelds sure would be inexpensive if someone decided to make the main drive a mini-cdrom drive, eh? Heck, you could have one mini cdrw and one mini cdrom, ie.. one to boot off of, and one to store your data, hecky, it sure would beat the sh*t out of the flash/microdrive combo!
Do you ever get the feeling these electronic/computer makers just want to stick it up your arz; and make it the most expensive device possible? They remind me alot of congress, BURP!!!!!!!!!!
So ... why is all this stuff free?
They like starting every program name with "g" or "k", don't they?
How come it can't do ... [insert various task here, such as instantly browse our network, etc]
Don't get me wrong, my jaw was on the floor when I saw how fast it started up, autoconfigured everything. etc ... BUT ... it does have a number of problems, and it's far from perfect (try desktop=gnome, for eg)
That will change when they re-write the installer. Have you checked the board(s) lately?
a rd =knoppix-en
http://www.linuxtag.org/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?bo
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== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??