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Quick Reviews Of The Latest From Crux, Knoppix
A semi-anonymous reader writes "lakerdonald has written a review of Knoppix 3.6, the latest release version of the popular Linux Live CD. Knoppix currently ranks #3 in the distrowatch chart, and is certainly a distro to keep your eyes on!" (Apparently, German readers can also get Knoppix 3.7 on the cover of a Germany computer magazine.) Another anonymous reader writes "The Crux Linux ppc port is growing really fast and well! These guys reviewed the release candidate #3 for the 2.0 version of this light-weight distribution."
This is a timely article, I just burned and used it today. A couple days ago my wife showed some interest in switching to Linux (after many XP frustrations) so I popped in a KNOPPIX 3.3 CD I had sitting around so she could try it out. She has an SMC2635 wireless card for her laptop and, sadly, it just isnt supported under Linux. Enter 3.6. It's still not supported, but two additions make it as painless as possible to get working: Captive NTFS and ndiswrapper. I downloaded the SMC drivers under XP and unpacked them on the hard drive. Booting back into KNOPPIX Captive NTFS then allowed me to mount the XP hard drive using XP's own NTFS dlls for read/write, and then use ndiswrapper to allow KNOPPIX to use the XP drivers for the SMC. Wireless goodness. The result? She's sitting behind me backing up files so I can repartition the HD to add a Linux partition.
Has someone tried recent versions of both Knoppix and Mepis?
Reviews are interesting, but comparative remarks from actual users would be even more interesting.
If you used both, how do they compare? Did you switch from one to the other, and why? Or do you use both for different purposes?
I've used Knoppix quite a bit, and have only twice had problems with hardware incompatibilities (both on old machines). On the other hand, every "live CD" distro I've tried for ppc (on a pretty new machine, a G3 white iBook) has had some problem, usually with video. This is rather strange, as x86 hardware is far more heterogenous than Apple hardware is.
Sure, you can configure Gentoo to work on an iBook, but the whole purpose of a live cd is to have something quick and autoconfigurable. The last time I remember this subject coming up, about a year ago, this posting was modded informative for responding to the call for a realistic LiveCD distribution for PPC with "Debian isn't really as hard as the poster says . . . I got my iBook online with debian, everything working, in the space of one weekend." A weekend does not a Live CD make. Have the Live CDs for PPC improved to the point that they'll boot from autoconfigure on recent (1-4 year old) Apple hardware?