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Knoppix Tips and Tricks

Posted by michael on from the sweet-debian-goodness dept.

cosog writes "Robert Storey writes in a thorough review about Knoppix: 'Some people even take a Knoppix disk with them when they go shopping for a new computer, a clever way to ensure that the hardware will be Linux compatible before you purchase it.' His article discusses things like: booting, rescuing, installing on HDD, tips'n'tricks, etc... A nice read for everyone interested in Linux (and Knoppix in particular ;)."

7 of 496 comments (clear)

  1. I used knoppix at bestbuy by mfchater · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I used a knoppix cd at best buy when looking for a new laptop. The salesman told me that I would not be able to run a linux distro on the toshiba Satelite p25-s607. I was happy to find out upon inserting the cd that I could indeed run linux. This was approx 3 months ago and the salesman said they wouldn't have drivers out for the video card for 6 months, of course he was wrong.

    1. Re:I used knoppix at bestbuy by Ieshan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Would be an interesting way to promote linux - make a dozen copies of Knoppix and slip them in Bestbuy computers, restart them.

      Voila!

      (smirk) Not sure the salespeople would appreciate it, though.

  2. Need bootable USB by fastdecade · · Score: 5, Interesting

    (Slashdotted already?)

    Well, knoppix CD is great, but with 256MB (and more?) USB keys out there, I wish more BIOS's would allow booting from USB, it'd be so nice to walk into a net cafe, pull linux out of my pocket or USB watch, and then read mail with mutt in X-Windows while surfing with my own damn bookmarks. And not having to close the last guy's chat session and assorted porn popups? Priceless.

  3. Knoppix and a Gig of Ram by Pyro226 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The newer (3.3 and up I think) versions of knoppix have a cool feature where the entire knoppix CD is loaded into ram. My friends computer has 1024 megs of ram, so we tried it out. It was so incredibly fast; Open Office barely took any time to load.

    I don't know if his top of the line, hyperthreaded P4 had a big impact, because I don't know hard it is to decompress the cloop compression knoppix uses. But if you have a computer with a gig or more of ram you should give it a try.

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    This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
  4. My 6 year old son likes Knoppix, really by MajorDick · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The timing of this article is too funny, today my son, who is 6 (almost 7) grabbed my knoppix CD thinking it was a copy (legal backup:) of I game I had just made a copy of for him for him.

    He put it in and after about 30 minutes after not hearing him ask for help with his game (which he ALWAYS does) I went in to see what he was doing, I almost had a heart attack, he was clicking away on Knoppix. It scared me becuase I forgot I had knoppix burned. and I thought he had rebooted my system into linux and changed from Gnome to KDE

    But the more I think about it the more I like the idea of setting him loose on a live distro, I dont have to worry about him buggering up my work system (yes I have a spare system for him but its not fast enough for most of his games)

    When I first started in computers I was his age and if I made a mistake I rebooted, no OS , MS basic in Rom and a 6502 on an OSI challener (the good 'ole days may date me a bit since that comp came out in 77 and I was 7:)but I got my feet wet in assy programming then. I didnt have to ask dear old dad for any help beyond well, everything, but I didnt have to worry about bonking an OS either.

    When I found him on the system he was drawing cats on gimp, bestill my little code monkey....

  5. I prefer Clusterknopix by twoslice · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ClusterKnoppix is Knoppix on steroids. Instant OpenMosix cluster using PXE network boot for clients.

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    From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
  6. I was downloading this yesterday afternoon... by stvangel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    and didn't notice until I tried to use it this afternoon that I only got 50 meg of it. I then went to a different site and was downloading it at about 120K per second. Being the idiot that I am, I accidently got the German version. Going back to the site, I can only get 25K per second tops. The Slashdot effect at work.

    Forget about building a special distro just for the 800 meg CD's out there. It's not really that much more space for something that's not "standard" in the first place. Why doesn't somebody go ahead and make a Knoppix-type distro for DVDs? Most newer machines have them and with 4.7 gig of storage space you can put pretty much everything on them. With one of these properly configured and a decent sized USB memory drive, this is all somebody really needs for a truly portable computing experience. You could fit Gnome and KDE as well as a good installer on them. Forget about making a "Live" version of a distro. With one DVD containing a live version of Linux as well as a full installation environment running on it, it's a true one-stop-shop.

    Does anybody make a credit-card form factor DVD +/-R like they do with the CD-Rs? If you could fit a full Knoppix distro onto something that size that you can fit into your wallet, that'd be really useful. While CD's aren't all that big, they're inconvenient to carry around all the time "just-in-case".

    It's really too bad that you can't burn a distro to a CR-RW or a DVD +/-RW and use the unused space as a worm drive of your configuration or data. You'd have to refresh the disc every so often as your available space would dwindle, but you could get around even needing a USB key-fob. Unfortunately the common disc-formats in use make this very difficult, but it's something to think about...d