Anyone Else Run Knoppix?

[stevevan]

Purchased a copy of Linux Magazine over the weekend and it came with a live distro of Knoppix 4 DVD. Of course I had to put it in my laptop and start playing. It booted up and started as easy as any Windoze app I've ever installed. The first thing I noticed is that the networking problems I was having on the hotel network with my Windoze XP went away. And after playing with the programs on the live distro, I'm seriously considering purchasing a laptop in the very new future, wiping out the default Windoze OS and installing Knoppix.

 

Has anyone else had any positive or negative issues with Knoppix?

[borfast]

Steve, I have used Knoppix a couple of times (actually, two derivatives of Knoppix) and found it pretty cool, mostly due to its great hardware detection and compatibility.

 

Still, I didn't find it much better than Ubuntu, which is much more polished than Knoppix. And if you prefer KDE instead of Gnome as your desktop, you can install Kubuntu instead. Even better: no matter which one you install, you can always go to the package manager and install the "kubuntu-desktop" or "ubuntu-desktop" package, which will make your system be able to boot to either Gnome or KDE - you see, Ubuntu and Kubuntu are basically the same Linux distribution, the difference is in the default set of packages but you can get any of their packages from the main Ubuntu repository, which is shared between the two versions

[Deverill]

I installed Ubuntu on the 2nd drive in my desktop and later grabbed the kubuntu-desktop and it works great! Everything is smooth and runs very happily on my system. The choice of desktop packages is nice if you don't have a favorite and want to play with both.

[borfast]

And you can always install additional packages, if the default ones are not enough for what you want

 

Just go to the "System" menu, "Administration" and click the "Synaptic Package Manager" - you'll have a world of packages to chose from, especially if you enable the Universe and Multiverse repositories

 

Just as a side note, it is also possible to add repositories using Synaptic directly but since the Ubuntu Guide I linked to above prefers the apt-get command line tool, they don't mention that and keep things consistent by telling people to edit the sources.list file directly.

[champagnemojo]

I used Knoppix for quite a while when I was first learning linux. The reason I chose it originally was because it was the only distro that would easily work with the old HPNA network my dad had set up. It was a fine distro, and the hard-drive install was really quite good. But I think you'll find that Kanotix is an improvement. The development on Knoppix seems to have slowed to a crawl. Also, there's less issues with package conflicts or what not with Kanotix. I'm using Ubuntu now on my desktop...but I have Kanotix on my laptop.

 

If you have a fast internet connection get Kanotix...otherwise, it's not worth the trouble since Knoppix is just about as good.