Slashdot Mirror
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 Galeon:
$ lynx -dump ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix/packages.tx$
And Flash and RealPlayer are vital for her. I'm going to have trouble enough convincing her to live without QuickTime...
Believe it or not, she's trying to write a *thesis* in *Word*! Crazy, I know. I'm banned from mentioning BibTeX whenever she starts complaining about citation management. And she's already wasted days thanks to proprietary formats. It's a wonder people manage to get any work done in Windows...
I just wrote a novel in Word, and the only problems were due to my (18 months ago, when I started) inexperience with Word on such big documents. Trust me--it's a tool that will get her job done, provided she takes the time to figure it out. (http://www.mvps.org/word for more info.)
If you want to move to a proprietary-free format from Word, save to HTML. Even with all of the buggy formatting, any competent web browser should be able to read it. (And if you want to scrub the HTML page of the office-code, Microsoft has a downloadable tool to do just that.)