Knoppix/Linux?

Punkinhead · Post by **Punkinhead** » Tuesday Apr 05, 2005

I know there are quite a few computer smart peeps on here so here is a question I'm having. I've been trying to get the Knoppix distro of Linux to run on my machine. It's the version that (supposedly) boots and runs from a cd rom. Well, I couldn't get the cdrom to boot but I did get it to boot from a boot floppy. I am having problems getting Knoppix to run though because it keeps asking for my partition. I was wondering if anyone on here has any tips/hints for installing/running Linux, any distro. Thanks.

aMindBesideItself · Post by **aMindBesideItself** » Tuesday Apr 05, 2005

If you are using Knoppix, chances are you are only going to be surfing the net anonymously. That's about all Knoppix is good for. It really is a poor distribution if you wanted to have a permanent install on the harddrive. (you can by type 'knoppix-installer' at the prompt). The best thing i can tell you to do, punkin , if you don't plan on storing any data, is to unhook your hard drive. There really is no need to keep a hard drive in a knoppix box. If you want to store some data...use a flash drive. Knoppix will pick that right up and put an icon on the desktop.

The easiest distribution to install is Mandrake. Go to http://www.linuxiso.org. And click on the link for Mandrake. Downoad the .iso images for Disk 1 2 and 3 then burn the iso as an 'image' file in Nero or Roxio. Let us know what you decide to do.

Let me know if you need more help.

Once you go Linux, you'll never go back.

HurricaneBob · Post by **HurricaneBob** » Wednesday Apr 06, 2005

WTF. Loaded post!

aMindBesideItself · Post by **aMindBesideItself** » Wednesday Apr 06, 2005

Do you think it's easier to explain to someone how to fix their filesystem, or to say 'disconnect your hard drive'.

I don't get your post.

HurricaneBob · Post by **HurricaneBob** » Wednesday Apr 06, 2005

I didnt either, OMG, where the hell was i? LOL

aMindBesideItself · Post by **aMindBesideItself** » Wednesday Apr 06, 2005

O man..now i have to change my last post so I don't look like an idiot.

We need to have a Linux Discussion on this page.

Hurricane, do you do everything in Linux?

HurricaneBob · Post by **HurricaneBob** » Wednesday Apr 06, 2005

No i do everything at the bar as you could tell LOL ! I used to be a big linux user having a couple systems running diff versions just to learn them. Red hat 6 was my fav when i was into it. If i could find the version thats best for gaming i would give up XP completely, but havent yet.

Staceman · Post by **Staceman** » Wednesday Apr 06, 2005

Knoppix is decent for when you just want to try out a Linux distro. It's also nice for repairing or recovering broken Windows partitions on a hard drive, or even fixing (or hacking) Linux installs. As for installing on a hard drive permanently, I would suggest another distro, (such as Mandrake) as the whole process isn't as user-friendly as it should be, definitely not for beginners.

I used to use Linux as my desktop OS, but eventually got sick of always having to screw with something extensively to get it to work, when it was something that required no fiddling at all on a Windows or MacOS X box. I'm what you'd call an advanced user, and am no stranger at all to compiling source code. But that's too much like work! (where I work, all of our servers run some flavor of *nix). When I get home, and want to use a computer for leisurely stuff, I don't want to have to spend my time screwing around with compiling and installing software just to get a game or an XMMS plugin or little desktop applet or whatnot to work, I want it to "just work"! Granted, it's cool as hell when you're successful and your hard work pays off; But most of the time, it's a very frustrating process. (dependancy hell!)

In other words, I feel that Linux is still not quite ready for prime time for the masses as an everyday user-friendly desktop OS. They're getting closer and closer though, with the latest releases of Mandrake and Fedora.

Staceman · Post by **Staceman** » Wednesday Apr 06, 2005

Oh, and as for gaming, they actually have an alternate Knoppix distro that's optimized for gaming, that's worth checking out. It even automatically throws in the accelerated X-windows drivers for most popular video cards.

http://games-knoppix.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/

Punkinhead · Post by **Punkinhead** » Wednesday Apr 06, 2005

My reason for using Knoppix is that my wife only knows Windows. Plus I just want to goof around with Linux a little, especially this summer when I don't have 80,000 projects due for a couple months.

Post by **Ron** » Thursday Apr 07, 2005

I doubt if Linux will ever be mainstream. It is fantastic for advanced users, but hell on the average computer hobbyist.
I write a lot of code for Linux (mainly embedded µCLinux), and we have a Linux guru who keeps track of our current distribution because it changes constantly. If Linux were a car, you'd have to pull the engine to change the oil, but it would be the fastest sled in the neighborhood.

Rockpage runs on Linux/Apache, but I usually don't have to update the OS, though I have re-compiled it a dozen or so times to add features that I needed, and I run a daily cronjob to check on updates that I may need.

Punkinhead, if you want to run Linux my recommendation is to get a dedicated machine to run it on. Trying to run both on the same comp can cause a lot of "WTF!" moments. Knoppix is pretty Windows safe, but only if you can boot and run from the CDROM. Make sure that your BIOS is set up to boot from the CDROM, and that your Knoppix CD really is bootable. Also keep it far, far away from your Windows drive as was suggested earlier.

Also go here... http://www.knoppix.net/forum/

f.sciarrillo · Post by **f.sciarrillo** » Friday Apr 08, 2005

Linux Rox .. Knoppix Rox !

The main reason for knoppix is to do repairs on your system should you get a hardware crash or something. If you get errors like "unmountable boot volumes" and such, and you use the good ol' "chkdsk /r" and that don't work. You can put it in your cd drive and get everything off your hd before you do a reformat.

You don't use it for everyday use. You can also use it to test linux out before you get it. Another thing you can do is this, I have not tried this so don't beat me if I am wrong here, some people say it works: You can get a system, wipe the hd, put the cd in the drive, run it and use the cd to run a network and such, while using the hd for storage. It would be somewhat like smoothwall, but from a cd. How secure would that be ?? the only down side would be that every time you go to reboot you would have to put all the info in again. I might try it on a old pc I have to see if it works or not. It would be good to do a test. (I would suggest trying it on a old system that you don't mind losing stuff on if you want to try that)

If you want to install linux, then Fedora and Mandrake are the best choices. Me personally, I like fedora.

@Ron - Is this server dedicated or shared ??

Staceman · Post by **Staceman** » Friday Apr 08, 2005

There's a way to get Knoppix to save it's settings to either a floppy or HD, without actually installing it on the HD. Not quite sure how it's done, but I know the feature is there.

And in response to an earlier reply, there are some older BIOS's that won't boot some normally bootable CD's, depending on the bootstrap they use. However, if I remember right, I think Knoppix generally boots on those systems as well. I had an old machine I was attempting to install GenToo Linux on, and the bootable CD wouldn't boot. I had to boot from Knoppix, and do one of those chroot installs of GenToo. It was a helluva mess, and ultimately was worthless, since for some reason GenToo failed to work with my ethernet cards, despite my careful choosing of the correct kernel module. Anyway, Ron's right, it's probably just a case of the BIOS set to not boot from the CD.

Speaking of Apache, I was just getting ready to mention how it's been so long since they released an update, after seemingly releasing updates almost monthly. Then I go and check their site, and lo and behold, 2.0.53 is now out. Time to get to work.

HurricaneBob · Post by **HurricaneBob** » Friday Apr 08, 2005

I remember using a linux boot disk to get files off of screwed NT machines. That was 3 years ago.....Good stuff!!

Post by **Ron** » Friday Apr 08, 2005

f.sciarrillo wrote:@Ron - Is this server dedicated or shared ??

It's shared, but they don't oversell, and the machine is a freakin' monster. I've never had better service or faster access.

f.sciarrillo · Post by **f.sciarrillo** » Friday Apr 08, 2005

Ron wrote:
f.sciarrillo wrote:@Ron - Is this server dedicated or shared ??
It's shared, but they don't oversell, and the machine is a freakin' monster. I've never had better service or faster access.

Cool, good it's working ..

Another one to try is bartpe. it is a program to make winpe, the normal pc user can never get winpe so this is for you to make your own - You can use it for the same reason you would use knoppix as far a repairs and such. What it does is take all the neccesary files off your windows operating system disk and puts them on a cd that can be bootable. You can also mount the image on your hd and use it as a daul boot if you like .. You can also add modules to it, it's a pretty cool unit ..

More info can be found here: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

tornandfrayed · Post by **tornandfrayed** » Wednesday May 04, 2005

Hey guys, for Music minded people the Ubuntu release of Linux is cool. There is actually some music software available that supports common audio drivers and is free. Also multichannel, sort of like Cubase.

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

Check it out !

f.sciarrillo · Post by **f.sciarrillo** » Wednesday May 04, 2005

tornandfrayed wrote:Hey guys, for Music minded people the Ubuntu release of Linux is cool. There is actually some music software available that supports common audio drivers and is free. Also multichannel, sort of like Cubase.

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

Check it out !

Ya know, I went to their website a while back and found that they were giving Ubuntu away for free. I filled all the info out and put that I would like to have 500 copies. To my surprise, they actually sent it lol. I was shocked. I haven't tried it yet to see what it is like though ... I imagine it is like any other linux build ..

I would still think that bartpe is better ..

Punkinhead · Post by **Punkinhead** » Tuesday May 10, 2005

Update:

At work I got to sit in through an install of gentoo on one of our servers to be used for our call center database....Also, they are allowing/making (which I don't mind...lol) me to install it on our backup server. So I'm in the process of getting my penguin cherry popped....lol...

f.sciarrillo · Post by **f.sciarrillo** » Tuesday May 10, 2005

Dude if you are going to be getting linux, I would suggest either Mandrake or Fedora. My Personal favorite is Fedora ... They are both free, and canbe downloaded from their websites ..

Punkinhead · Post by **Punkinhead** » Wednesday May 11, 2005

The reason for using Gentoo is it gives us the most options over what parts we want installed. It's my work's choice for our servers because we don't need all of the stuff that comes with the completely full install. We only need specifics for it's sole purpose and only want them there.

For my own pc though, it's Mandrake. No doubt.

Punkinhead · Post by **Punkinhead** » Tuesday Jun 21, 2005

Another update to this...I've got Knoppix finally booting from CD and that's what I'm running now...

f.sciarrillo · Post by **f.sciarrillo** » Tuesday Jun 21, 2005

Punkinhead wrote:Another update to this...I've got Knoppix finally booting from CD and that's what I'm running now...

Cool, have you tried windowspe yet ??

Punkinhead · Post by **Punkinhead** » Saturday Jun 25, 2005

f.sciarrillo wrote:
Punkinhead wrote:Another update to this...I've got Knoppix finally booting from CD and that's what I'm running now...
Cool, have you tried windowspe yet ??

Can't say that I have...how is it?

f.sciarrillo · Post by **f.sciarrillo** » Monday Jun 27, 2005

Punkinhead wrote:
f.sciarrillo wrote:
Punkinhead wrote:Another update to this...I've got Knoppix finally booting from CD and that's what I'm running now...
Cool, have you tried windowspe yet ??
Can't say that I have...how is it?

It's pretty good, I use it all the time. It don't have all the bloat that linux has. You can use BartPE to make your own version. basically it is a windows OS on a cd. With Bartpe you can customize what you want on it and such ...

More info: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
Forums for tech support and plugins: http://www.911cd.net/forums/

ROCKPAGE

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