Anyone tried Knoppix? http://www.knoppix.org/ It surely looks quite good. Can have the Linux OS on a single CD... and it is free to download! I am in the process of downloading it now... 10 hours needed to download this
I've tried the Mandriva version... Very impressive... Someone wrote something so you can do it with Windows too. http://www.bandofgonzos.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=3071
I've tried Knoppix, to show to a client how 'wonderful' linux can be. It takes ages to boot on a slow cd-rom drive, but does what it promisses: linux without any configuration! and that's what's the fun thing. You can try , or show it in my case , it out without re-partitioning a harddrive and really use linux! I once had a linux kernel (1.*) that ran on a MS-DOS partition on windows 98. You had to 'reboot to dos', or actually close down windows, and then could start a batch file that loaded Linux. All files were in C:\linux and were accessible later when you booted again in windows-mode. that was pretty cool too. never seen that again with the newer kernels. Your 10 hours of downloading will be over now , so I wish you fun with your new CD Knoppix is worth a CD-R
I started using Linux when it was in infancy, in 96. Installing it took me 3 days. During those days it you need courage, coffee and uncontrollable eagerness. If not you would die trying. I am glad that those days are over .. but fret the fact that some new Linux distro are beginning to resemble Windows. Some are shipped with bulky softwares that hangs your PC. I am an old-fashion user. I want something that is simple, small and powerful. I hope Knoppix does that ( haven't tried it)
Knoppix is OK, but I think SimplyMEPIS is much better find it @ http://mepis.org/ If SuSE was not around, I am sure I would be running MEPIS
Hehe, I have finished downloading that 700MB thing, burnt it to a CD. Now working on something, will try booting into Linux using the CD in a while
Tried booting into Knoppix. It works great! The bootup process took around a couple of minutes on my DELL notebook, quite fast indeed. Played around for a while... nothing much, just the normal stuff. Conclusion, this thing works.
Kubuntu/Ubuntu Live CD is also quite cool.. And if download times matter, Damn Small Linux is only 50MB.. very cool. They even have an embedded version that runs in Windows Josh
DSL (Damn Small Linux) http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ Only 50MB but very, very powerfull for it size and it needs so few resources that it may run on a 486 with only 16MB of ram ( not verified ), I had it running with only 32MB ram on a P3.
Having this to play around with on long trips or boring hotel stays might be cool. I'll DL it, thanks.
Yeah I was looking at trying out the LiveCD of MEPIS. Looks interesting from everything I've seen and read. Why have you decided to go with SuSE though? Just curious.
Suse has their Live CD's which are pretty cool to test it out. I think their downloads are quicker - I haven't used it in a while. Debian seems to be one of the big favorites among linux guys, but they are slow to release and if you don't follow the development you're not sure which unstable version is most stable. Gentoo is an interesting distro too, but I haven't played with it too much.
When I started to use Linux years ago, SuSE got the conflict ressolution under control. It now has the susewatcher to keep you informed of security updates. Takes 5 CD's to hold all the programs that come with it. No registration or membership required. The boxed set includes about a 1000 pages of manuals. It was the best I could find at the time, and it got better. Mepis may be just as good for most users, but I like the extra stuff that comes with SuSE. I do like the installable LiveCD Mepis has.
I like SuSE as well for the following reasons: 1) susewatcher - although it only works for your installed rpms, it's better than nothing - it slims down dramatically on the number of security updates I have to watch for. I still keep an eye on things, but at the same time it's much less of a headache. 2) hackers - SuSE seems to get attacked less than RH installations I've had. I don't know about the more recent versions of RH, I switched over years ago. There is so much RH out there that it's a good platform to look into if you are a hacker. 3) yast - it's a nice installation interface and there's a good library of software in it. Especially when I need to install some supporting libraries or something like that. If I use yast then I'm sure to get security updates. Yast is probably the best installation platform I've seen in the linux world too. Maybe I'm just used to it, but RH's RPM manager thing always confused me so I compiled things from source a lot more often. 4) Piece of cake install. 5) Remote administration GUI - I can use ssh to tunnel in a vnc connection and be able to use some gui tools to administer the server. It saves me from having to use the vi editor to make changes to my httpd.conf files, etc. and there's a pretty handy dandy MySQL admin tool to boot. 6) Novell is a company that isn't going anywhere for a while. SuSE is probably not the platform you hear about most when talking about server installations, but it's pretty nice IMO. I think it's one of the most friendly platforms for a linux newbie as well.
Oh, all these guys have live CD ya... That Damn Small Linux got me wondering how much can they pack in 50MB, will check that out
Damn Small is pretty awesome. I was pretty shocked when it actually booted with a decent GUI, and with a decent number of programs. Even has servers and such built-in. And of course, since it so small.. it doesn't take much RAM. So it will run on anything Its very very fast with my 512MB of ram and 2.2Ghz Celeron. Knoppix is really sluggish, and Ubuntu Live is decent, but still a little slow. Josh