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jimf
01-05-2003, 06:05 PM
I understand that there are many uses for the Knoppix CD, but, I believe that the single most important one is as a installer for a nicely configured Debian distro. If Linux, and specifically Debian, is to be a useful & successful desktop, then, this is absolutely critical. Also, remember that Windows now has 90+% of the desktops and you see why this is so important.

So obviously, many of the people looking at Knoppix are Windows users who want an alternative to MS, and, really want to see a 'comparable' OS Desktop. Linux has to give them more of a reason to transition than "MS is the evil empire". This means that they are expecting (and deserve) the same or better level of development in all levels of the OS including initial installation. Knoppix is perhaps the closest example yet of how that can happen.

In spite of all my efforts, I've never been able to complete a GUI installation in Debian. Mandrake yes, SuSE yes, even Slackware, but Debian NOT. So, I was pleased with the nearly flawless installation of Knoppix with the CD and expected the same with hd installation. Unfortunately, the HD install leaves you a few sticks short of the great Knoppix CD install.

I simply can't understand why things like the NTFS drive recognition and the network interface shouldn't transfer with the hd install. In the forum hd install section, I see this stated over and over again, people want an 'identical' install of Knoppix on the hd. Instead, it would appear that they are getting a (very basic) copy of Debian. This really needs to change, and, some kind of a major effort is needed here.

RunLevelZero
01-06-2003, 12:07 AM
I was surprised and disapointed myself. It is a great install none-the-less but it would be nice to just knx-hdinstall and have the exact same thing boot from the hard drive. I just wanted to throw in my two cents. Thanks for the great work though. I love Knoppix.

Tigren
01-07-2003, 10:18 PM
This really needs to change, and, some kind of a major effort is needed here.

Well, if you feel that a major effort is needed, go ahead and pitch in. The hard drive installer was built by on of us, a Knoppix user. Out of his own good heart he created this for us. This distro wasn't made to be installed to the hard drive, but to be used from a CD. Now, some people have helped to get it onto the hard drive, but they can't do all the work. If the installer is not up to par, then help make a new one or better the existing one.

aay
01-07-2003, 11:08 PM
I have to agree with Tigren. This subject comes up a lot on the forums,but it needs to be stressed that Klaus Knopper has never intended Knoppix to be used for installs on a hard drive. As Tigren pointed out, the install script was created by a user and was kindly included by Klaus. I not trying to say your request is illegitimate, but if Klaus is not interested in developing this himself then it is incumbent upon those who want such improvements to come up with them themselves. Like it or not that's just the way it is.

01-19-2003, 04:39 AM
And if that were my field of expertese, I'd be happy to do it. Unfortuneately, it's not. You say that you've already seen the same problems, but I notice that you've not done anything about it either, and, Klaus Knopper certainly has the right to take his creation in any direction he chooses. So, realisticaly this will probably not become reality. Too bad :roll:

I do have to note an 'attitude' that I've found to be the norm in the Linux community, and if Linux fails as a desktop solution that attitude and not the OS will be the reason. But, my other thought is that although it would be great to have Knoppix as the ultimate Debian desktop, if it doesn't happen, there are other solutions for me.

Tigren
01-19-2003, 08:15 AM
I do have to note an 'attitude' that I've found to be the norm in the Linux community, and if Linux fails as a desktop solution that attitude and not the OS will be the reason.

This attitude is usually directed to people like you, who request and request and request, but never do anything for yourself. I still consider myself very much a "n00b" and I have tons of stuff to learn still, but one thing I have learned is that if you want something done, the best thing to do is try it yourself first. And, if you can not get it to work, then, and only then, should you ask someone you know knows. This attitude isn't given to deter you from Linux, but to get you to try some things on your own before asking the "experts".

wapi
01-20-2003, 07:56 AM
I find that the want to be of this world are always the people that tell others to do it themselves. This is a very childish as not ever one has the skills or time to learn programing. Knoppix like linux has a great future if the people with the skills time and genorosity try to develop a distro's that meets people's needs and in most cases these needs are very basic, so you so called Knoppix masters use your brains and not your mouths. get of your bums and contribute. Knoppix is a great steep in the right direction lets hope that its development continues. Thanf you Klaus

dvessey
01-22-2003, 03:12 AM
Ok, let's not start a flame war here, no one needs or wants it.

I have that same attitude, that if you want something done, try to do it yourself. I believe the trouble comes when people come to Linux from Windows, and in the windows world, you can't really do much for yourself. You can't rebuild the kernel, you can't compile many of your apps, if you want features in apps you have to request them. Then you make the move over to Linux, and you can do all of this stuff, with very little difficulty.

Knoppix(and Linux in general) are financially free, but they do cost time. Next to no one is getting paid to work on all these wonderful apps, and they do have to make money at some point. so maybe they don't feel like programming 100% of the time, and that's fine with me. I'll take what I get cause I'm not paying a cent for it.

senorian
01-23-2003, 06:11 PM
Perhaps the title of this section leads to misunderstandings.
If I have what I consider to be a great idea, and I feel capable of doing it; I am most likely to go ahead and do it and then, when I know that it works (to dream is sweet) I will announce it to the world.
This section would seem to be for those people, like me, who have ideas but no knowledge to execute them.
It seems inevitable that any idea put forward will sound as though it is a request that someone else do the work.
How do we (I) avoid that?

dvessey
01-24-2003, 02:28 AM
I'm not quite sure how to avoid it to tell you the truth. the Ideas forum is a great place, but too often people come on here simply wanting more programs added. This is a fairly simple procedure and many people here can help you along in the customizing forum.

This is an example of a good idea though, in my opinion, the kind that should be posted in this forum.

eadz
02-07-2003, 04:17 PM
This section would seem to be for those people, like me, who have ideas but no knowledge to execute them.

Correct. ( although if you DO have knowledge to excute them it's still a good idea to post them here for discussion - take the ~/etc/ thread for example )

It is set up, for people who have ideas to submit them. If they have the skill/means/time to impliment the idea, i'm sure they will. But usually its for discussion about is this a good idea, or how to do it.

Saying "do it yourself" is not helpful. Some of the ideas are "adding a program" or other things, which is fine. These ideas will hopefully be picked up sometime and implimented.

qa1433
02-07-2003, 06:01 PM
Personally I think this is a great idea. I am sure somebody has done it already. I am so tired of folk in the idea's or suggestions forums (not just here but in others also) stating RTFM or go do it youself.

Don't get me wrong, the masters of Linux think bad of us newbs.

However, with a distro focused at regular Windows (Hopefully X Windows users) users. Therefore these type of suggestions are very valuable and usefull.
just my 2 cents. 8)

Alextreme
02-07-2003, 10:49 PM
Useful enough to be implemented ;)

I'm busy on a gtk2-installer for my knoppix-based distro morphix (but it could easily be adapted back for knoppix), you can download the source+precompiled bin at http://am.xs4all.nl/morphix/installer.

Note that this is a trial-version, all it does is print it's actions to stdout so you can try it out (learned that the hard way ;)) without actually installing or changing anything except for cfdisk. Also, it's just a begin, i've yet to test it propper or include it.

And, well, morphix may not be knoppix, but what do you think are good requirements for an installer? Yes, it's just a plain copy of the CD (uncompressed), it sets up lilo, and i'm thinking about a better partition-prog, but i'm not someone that has problems with a normal debian install. What would you find easier? How far does the expertise go of a casual Windows user? Can you let him partition his harddisk?

I also thought about starting a topic in the hdd install forum, but seeing this topic i'd like to know what the 'newbs' think. Speak now and i might even adapt the installer accordingly :)

qa1433
02-07-2003, 11:44 PM
I think it would be a great idea! :lol:

god
02-07-2003, 11:59 PM
the way i see it, the stages of window-->linux conversion go as follow for the easiest time of it....
1. Live CD
2. Install a copy of the live CD as a Dual boot (the close the HD installation to the live CD the better. The easier, the better)
3. Possible drop of windows completely.

I agree that some people come across as lazy people wanting others to do the work, but some of them want someone to HELP them do it. Show them how, teach them. Some of the people you tell to do it yourself have tried, or need help with an idea, and it is not always a request to have it done for them....

Alextreme
02-08-2003, 12:15 AM
Hmm, dual booting. I think the debian installer has a nice lilo-setup script for that, detecting all window partitions, i'll chuck it in...

aloneinthevoid
02-15-2003, 07:25 PM
Has anyone looked at the possibility of using PGI, the Progeny Graphical Installer to install Knoppix to a H.D.? Personally, I had no problem with knx-hdinstall, but I've done a number of Debian installs; I understand that WIN users are intimidated by the CLI and PGI is very user-friendly, it's open-source, and it's the leader (AFAIK) to be the default Debian graphical installer (one of the goals for Sarge to become stable is a graphical installer). IMHO, the more people who are able to install Knoppix to a hard drive, the better, and PGI is a top-notch application for that task.

Alextreme
02-15-2003, 07:50 PM
I have looked into it, and might snipe a few ideas. If you have some time over check out www.morphix.org, the 0.3 version has the GTK2 installer (try out light, it's an easy download :))

However, i must sniffle the rumor that PGI would be included as the default installer. You are right that a lot of work is being done on the default debian-installer, but this is not PGI! PGI might be a nice alternative, but Debian is all about supporting multiple platforms. That, and that there still are people installing over a serial link ;)

aloneinthevoid
02-15-2003, 08:17 PM
I have looked into it, and might snipe a few ideas. If you have some time over check out www.morphix.org, the 0.3 version has the GTK2 installer (try out light, it's an easy download :))

However, i must sniffle the rumor that PGI would be included as the default installer. You are right that a lot of work is being done on the default debian-installer, but this is not PGI! PGI might be a nice alternative, but Debian is all about supporting multiple platforms. That, and that there still are people installing over a serial link ;)Yeah, I was given to understand that the multi-platform aspect was the place where PGI drops the ball, but I'd have to argue that in the case of a Knoppix install, it's likely that the person doing the install would be new to Linux. My concern would be that the old "Linux is too damned hard to Install" be a hangup to prevent WINusers who like Knoppix (or any derivative) from installing to a hard drive; it's also fairly unlikely that a new user would be installing to a Sun/SPARC.

David Douthitt
02-15-2003, 08:40 PM
the way i see it, the stages of window-->linux conversion go as follow for the easiest time of it....
1. Live CD
2. Install a copy of the live CD as a Dual boot (the close the HD installation to the live CD the better. The easier, the better)
3. Possible drop of windows completely


I agree. As a staunch UNIX/Linux user for a long time, I wanted to see if I could use it for regular daily use as a desktop - and especially since I don't know all the ins and outs of the Linux desktop.

This is changing rapidly. First I installed SuSE 8.1 Professional onto one of my systems with the full complement of user goodies (instead of just servers). Then a friend at work showed me Knoppix. He never got his CD back :-) (he let me have it when I begged... :-))

Now I've been running with Knoppix for several weeks, and have found everything generally be tiptop.

In the case of pitching in, I just might do that. Of course, I've my own Linux distribution to think about :-) - go to http://leaf.sf.net and look for Oxygen.

Anyway - about the hard drive install... I just did it (wiped out Solaris 8...) and only had a few troubles. First, the Solaris partition freaked out cfdisk - but the hdinstall handled it very well indeed.

The biggest trouble was that it doesn't seem to document the fact that the install is designed for loading everything to / on a single partition. I routinely set up /boot, /, /usr, /var, and /tmp - but that didn't work here. In this case, I only set up /boot and /, and then had to:

cd /boot ; find . | cpio -pmvd /mnt/roothd

or similar. Not a big deal, but certainly can be a trap for a passing weary traveler.

Also, it asks for passwords for knoppix and for root - but in the original "text" window. If you're not expecting it, you could be momentarily confused until you discover it.

It would also be nice to "extract" the Knoppix-isms and replace them with the original Debian setup - but that may be straying into the "Knoppix as a graphical Debian install" topic too much.

Dr. Gluttonius
02-27-2003, 11:46 AM
Well IMHO a graphical installer would be amazing for knoppix, i am a complete newbie to linux, have used mandrake for a few moths befroe i discovered Knoppix, now all my friends have at least on CD for rescue purposes, or just for getting an amazing non MS system ready and booted in minutes.

I think knoppix from cd is nothing short of amazing, and the work that Herr Knopper must have done to make it work is admirable. So while i understand that HIS aim is not for it to be an installed distro i dont see why this prevents it being implemented.

If Knoppix had a choice between say 2 installers, a graphical one for extreme ease of use, and the good old CLI for crossplatform compatibility and of course to pet the masters who shun anything with more than 2 colors, i am sure that it would be a kick ass system, a FREE distro installing a very smooth Debian derivative. It would be a free version of Xandros light, just nicer. :wink:

---> Alextreme, about HD partition, i think this can be handled by most windows users above a certain level, check to the commercial distros for ideas here, they still let you partition yourself, just with a GUI frontend, and suddenly it all seems so much easier

Well, that's just my idea, i am not a programmer, just a user, so implementation of this wouldn't be something for me to dabble with, now if you want me to analyse an ECG that's where i have expertise :lol:

Alextreme
02-27-2003, 02:19 PM
Hmm, on the hd-detection, it's working quite well now! The 0.3-2 release of morphix has a few new options, still no GUI partition tool but a number of bugs have been removed. I should take a look at how mdk/rh handles this, but the gtk2 installer on it's own is a breeze to install (then again, everything you make yourself is easy, but this is truely straightforward :D)

I have heard a number of people wanting to have it included in knoppix, or at least to derive some idea's for in knx-hdinstall. I've a cvs up on sf.net, and i could even go so far as have a knoppix-branch, but i don't know how good knx-hdinstall has gotten so it might be unneeded.

Anyway, the masters that shun anything with more than 2 colors will probably want to install from scratch, thats what the Debian installer is for. For us mere mortals, Knoppix and derivatives are a welcome alternative ;)