Windows Died, Can Knoppix wipe it Out and Take its Place?

[Zaiella]

Hey, my sister's a college student and somehow her Windows got destroyed on her laptop. It says Windows can't start because Windows/System32/Windows (or whatever it is but it looks like the main system to me) is missing or corrupted and it wants her repair disk which she can't find or I would have reinstalled it. So she decides she wants a whole new laptop and gave hers to me. Even if I could fix it she said I could keep it. I remembered playing with a Knoppix CD a friend sent me a few years ago (when my WinME was blue screening every few days) I don't know much, just enough to get Knoppix working on a PC, which I've already done and it works great, I got 6.4.4 DVD, and her Laptop is a Dell Insprion I believe? Anyway, it seems to be all good, I just don't know how to wipe/clean the drive, and I've read that it's not a good idea to put Knoppix on the HDD, but I'm a bit confused by all the different ways to get Debian. I just grabbed the ISO, checked the checksum and burnt it and had zero problems. Is Debian that easy to do? And can I do this without using the commands? Thanks for any help.

[Harry Kuhman]

Hi.

Knoppix really isn't intended for hard disk install, it is intended as a Live CD or DVD. While some people who are very good at Linux say they can sorta make it work, I believe that you will be much better off with a Debian install than a Knoppix install.

There is plenty to be confused about when first trying to get and install Debian. I'll try to cover some points but feel free to ask. The good news is that the computer has been given up on anyway, so you are free to try installing as much as you want without much risk.

First of all, there are multiple versions of Debian available. If I remember right (and I likely don't), they are refereed to as Stable, Unstable and Experimental. They also often go by the names of Toy Story characters, such as Woody. However, as the versions change the Toy Story names change, but Debian Unstable is always the current "unstable" version. The key thing to understand here is that Stable doesn't mean the same thing as you might expect. It means "Really Old". Unstable, on the other hand, is much more stable than anything that Microsoft ever released. I would only use "Stable" if I was going to build a server that had to run 24/7 and wanted to minimize my chances of problems. But "unstable" is dependable and will have much newer hardware support and features. I suggest that you start with "Unstable". And if you want the latest and greatest and don't mind that you might come across a bug or two you could try the bleeding edge Experimental release (but I really don't think this is the best choice for a Linux novice unless you find that you have hardware that isn't supported in the more mature "unstable" release.

Another point of confusion is how to get it. Debian is released in many formats, from a full set of DVDs or ever a rather large set of CDs, to something called a "business card" disc to a "net boot" disc. As long as you have a high speed Internet connection available, I suggest the net boot disc, and skip all of the larger discs. Net boot will get you all you need from the Internet, and you will not later be pestered about inserting CD #3 or whatever into the drive when you want to install something. I would only suggest installing from the CD or DVD set for people who have no Internet connection. Even then you only need the first DVD or the first one or two CDs, the rest of the discs contain software you are not likely to install.

When you go to download your net install CD you will find that there are versions of Debian made for many different computer processors. The i386 version works for most PC users, and it is the version that Knoppix is based on. If you have a 64 bit CPU (and most laptops do now, I'll leave it to you to research exactly what is in your sister's laptop), then you could get either the AMD 64 bit version or the Intel 64 bit version depending on which CPU is in there. I don't know all of the pros and cons of going with one of the 64 bit versions (others are welcome to discuss that), as I have stuck with the 32 bit i386 version so far. It works fine on 64 bit computers.

When installing you are asked a few questions. Debian has learned a lot from Knoppix and you no longer should get asked things like the I/O interupt information of all you hardware. It was things like this that made people want to install Knoppix rather than Debian years ago, but those days are gone. You will be asked about the disk, in your case I would think that you should let Debian just use the entire disk. And you will be asked about making a server, a workstation or perhaps other configurations. It is important here to select "workstation", this will set you up with a GUI and other things that you expect. Debian will, of course, wipe off the crud and let you install fresh on that hard drive.

Don't be afraid to play around with the install. Now is a great time to play around with it, you can always reboot the net install CD and try again if something isn't how you like it. That is a bit harder to do after you have the OS installed and you are comfortable with whatever changes you make.

A fresh install of Debian will not have all of the programs that Knoppix includes. But you can install any of them with a simple apt-get command. And there is a lot more good free software available on the apt-get system that wasn't included in Knoppix, so you have a large library of free software to select from. Apt-get tends to break Knoppix installs, but is a fantastic tool for Debian installs.

Good luck.

[Capricorny]

Zaiella, what I mostly do myself, is to take out the whole Windows disk from the pc, and set up a new one for Linux or dual boot use. In your case, you risk having problems with the disk, as the Windows crash may have resulted from disk problems in the first place. In your case, I would have set up a good size FAT32 partition first on the new disk, and then used the "install Knoppix to flash" option in Knoppix/Preferences to make a quick poor man's install to that partition. Then you are up and running simply and swiftly, and you can explore further opportunities from there. If you are real serious about "full size" Linux use, standard Debian is, as noted here, a very viable alternative. But very much of the different possibilities you already have in Knoppix now, so it is a good and simple place to start. If you start with that FAT32 partition (will probably be called /dev/sda1), you can install Windows to it later if you wish (it might be converted to NTFS during install), while still having left parttions for Linux on the disk.

[Zaiella]

Thank you both for your advice. I do want a replacement for Windows on that PC. I have no idea of its specs. I hear that Ubuntu is in the Debian family and is a bit more user friendly, so I might give that a try as well if it's got an ISO. I wanted the Harddrive clean of the dead Windows (Sis said she's already gotten everything she needed off the HD)

[Capricorny]

I think Ubuntu is in some ways further downstream from standard Debian than current Knoppix is, but that should not matter much - it is a very popular distro, and I think it is a good place to start - though I have not used it much myself, and not lately. If you don't care about the contents on the disk, and you think it is good enough, you can let the Ubuntu installer take care of the setup.

[Zaiella]

I think I might do that. I just looked at a video for the newest release of Ubuntu and it looked great. May I ask why you think it is downsteam? From my Knoppix DVD and that video, it looked like they were pretty much on the same page, as far as I could tell. I would use Knoppix in a heartbeat if it could go safely on the HD, and right now Debian seems intimidating because it looks like so much to download. Maybe one day I'll be using one of them though. :)

[Harry Kuhman]

.... and right now Debian seems intimidating because it looks like so much to download....
You seem to be ignoring what I took the time to say. Debian, if installed from a net install disc, only needs an innitial download of 100 megs or so. Far less than Ubuntu, Kubuntu or the other confusing things to pick from. Of course, it will download more during the net install, but no more than a basic Ubuntu install, maybe less, and it manages it all so you really don't have any reason to be intimadet about that. If you are downloading a lot of stuff to install Debian you are doing it wrong (and qwill create even more work for yourself in the long run) unless you are a Linux expert and really know what you are doing.

Maybe you would be happy with Ubuntu, but popular doesn't equate with good. By that standard Windows could be considered good. I looked at Ubuntu a while ago, but found no merit over Debian. Can't say I've tried to keep up with every release, but I was unimpressed enough to not bother.

[Zaiella]

Sorry, Harry, I read everything you said, but when you said Netboot disk I thought of this http://www.debian.org/CD/live/ I don't know what how to set up a Network boot server (or what a hybrid ISO is, but that looks like what I'll end up using. And I know that page says Stable release, and I can't find the Unstable, but I also go here http://www.debian.org/CD/http-ftp/ snd don't know which of those to choose. Do you know where the Unstable DVD ISO is? (I don't have Blank CDs just DVDs)

[Harry Kuhman]

I caused a lot of the confusion myself. Not only with the net thing but also with the flavors. As I said, I was off on the naming, it is Stable, testing and unstable. The version that I recommend is testing, but it can be hard to find on the confusing Debian website. If you just click a link to download a small CD I expect that you will get the Stable (OLD) version. I need to do something for a few hours but will try to find and post the right link later.

[Zaiella]

<span style="background-color: #99FF99;">Is the stable version really that old? Could I not just update all the stuff? I don't really need anything fancy, I don't even know if there's a good graphics card in that laptop. How old is it?</span>

[OErjan]

it is most likely the 213 M iso from here you need to boot (if it is not a 64Bit processor).
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily/arch-latest/i386/iso-cd/

if you need some other processor support look here
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily/arch-latest/

as for "difficult installing"i think it is not too hard, my 11 year old niece managed it without problem by just reading and following instructions on screen as she went, true it was a clean hdd but if you allow Debian to auto partition it i think it will be OK (if you do not need to rescue data from it that is).
oh and i heartily agree with Harry - Verifying of md5 checksum and burning a CD at slow speed are important.

[Capricorny]

May I ask why you think it is downsteam? From my Knoppix DVD and that video, it looked like they were pretty much on the same page, as far as I could tell. I would use Knoppix in a heartbeat if it could go safely on the HD, and right now Debian seems intimidating because it looks like so much to download.

AFAIK, Ubuntu started out as a Debian derivative, addressing exactly some of the "intimidating" aspects of then Debian. In distro time, that is very long ago, and while I know there was an intention to feed improvements from the Ubuntu project back to Debian, I don't know how how much that has happened. But I know that for general use, as Harry and Oerjan says, current Debian is quite fine, and I don't think the current Knoppix "experience" is far from what you get with "pure" Debian. Ubuntu could have an edge if you are mostly an "end user", but, for example, for learning system administration, my view is that nothing quite beats Debian.

[OErjan]

[/URL]Capricorny, I quite agree on most of the above, Debian is now MUCH simpler than when Ubuntu first came.
as for Debian (Or Slackware), in my opinion they are THE distros if you want to learn linux - IF YOU WANT TO - they allow you to dig as everything is NOT automagic, so if you want to go deeper...
to go much Deeper, possibly http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ (http://www.knoppix.net/forum/members/31085-Capricorny) or [url]http://www.gentoo.org/ should be bout right.

[Zaiella]

All right, thanks. Which of those files do I need and what are all the .small files? Also, unless there is some HUGE difference between the stable and testing versions of Debian, I think I might rather have stable. I'd rather have something that works with minimal errors and crashings then the newest stuff. I'm still using WinXP, which I have minimal crashings with (although, yes they do happen, but nothing like 95, 98, and ME nightmares) and the Vista horror stories made me steer clear. My grandmother and aunt have 7 which I have very limited experiance with.

What I'm looking for really is
A strong solid secure OS to clean up the drive and replace Windows
Updates when they're needed
Great hardware detection (I couldn't tell you what is on that laptop) and driver installion for the stuff
Easy to install and run (also easy program installs)
Can go online and do everything like flash and Java and music
A nice customizable graphic desktop where everything can be accessed with limited commands. I'm just not ready to memorize all those commands yet, so I'd like stuff in the desktop also.
I'm not really interested in going deep into the OS kernal or anything like that.

Thanks for all the replies.

[Harry Kuhman]

I wrote a response to this thread last night, but it isn't here now so I guess something went wrong as I was going to post it.

I don't know the exact dates of the different Debian versions. When I made my choice it was several years out of date and was missing a lot of support for newer hardware. You could research the ages of the different versions if you are really interested. My suggestion is still to do a net install of the testing version even though that may take you five minutes longer to find.

No, you can't just update to testing or unstable later. Compatibilities between packages is very important in Linux and once you have stable you stay in stable. That, in fact, is one of the major issues about installing Knoppix to a hard drive. The developer of Knoppix didn't stay within one version, he mixed and matched between stable, testing and unstable. He had to carefully test things and be sure that interactions worked OK. But when installed to hard disk, if you install anything else or even do a simple update, you likely will pull in newer packages that create serous incompatibilities between the versions and break a lot of things.

[Zaiella]

All right, thanks. What are the .small files in here? Do I need them?

[Werner P. Schulz]

All right, thanks. What are the .small files in here? Do I need them?
... the small files contains the checksums. You need only one; and how to use for example md5sum you can read here (http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Md5sum)

Greetings Werner * http://www.wp-schulz.de/knoppix/summary.html
Own Rescue-CD with Knoppix (Knoppix V6.4.4 remaster)

[Zaiella]

Thanks y'all. I can do checksums. I'll try out Debian next. :)

[Zaiella]

Actually, before I do Debian, if I want to get Debian off the computer for any reason will I be able to? I'm asking because it doesn't look like it lets me see it from CD first. I have Knoppix of course and I got Ubuntu which I actually really like and it seems perfect for me at this moment, but I'd still like to give Debian a shot too. How many Unix codes will I need to know? Can everything be done from the Graphic interface? I'm checking before I make the CD (but I do have the ISO and checksum downloaded.)

[OErjan]

certainly, just install something else over it or boot Knoppix and use fdisk, cfdisk, qtparted or similar to wipe partitions and go from there.

[Zaiella]

All right, thanks.

[Zaiella]

One last thing, do I need the buisnesscard ISO?

[Zaiella]

So sorry for my multiple posts. I appreciate y'all's responses, especially since we're not even talking about Knoppix. I've found a live CD version of Debian, and I'd like to get it, since it would make me more comfortable. http://live.debian.net/ and their site is a lot easier for me to understand. Is there any reason I shouldn't use it? Also, and I know this is probably silly, but where is the BIOS stored on a computer? Giving something the "whole disc" won't delete the BIOS, right? This is my first time installing OSes like this and GParted was kinda intimidating, so I'm just checking. Thanks.

[OErjan]

uhm, I know some old relics had part of BIOS on hdd (I accidentally erased it on my old 486) but most now have BIOS on a separate flash rom.
Uhm ok,more or less all, there are a few specialty boxes for controlling equipment in industry that still do this, but to 90% those try to occupy tiny space and therefore use same flash card for everything (more or less an expanded BIOS).

To conclude, if your computer is newer than 66MHZ you can likely disconnect the hdd and still boot knoppix, if you cn it is fairly safe to wipe the disk.
if you use this image and this checksum you are bit closer to what you need.
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily/arch-latest/i386/iso-cd/debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso
7a45b52c9bc6c53e33159d49bfa52c6d debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso

reason i say this is that this ISO has basic system components that the the buissnesscard one does NOT, I have foud that it sometimes require YOU to install drivers... DURING install (less than optimum IMHO).

keep asking, we like to give advise and are patient as you can see :-)

[Zaiella]

Thanks. I'm actually leaning more toward Ubuntu still. I managed to get the Live Debian CD (didn't install it) and it just looked way too confusing for me. I got the KDE version, would Gnome have been better? If I install the "real" Debian and not the Live one would I get a choice of Gnome or KDE?

I can't install anything until I know for certain how. I asked them at the Dell forums, maybe they will tell me if it's safe to let an OS use the whole disk. The Laptop is a Inspiron 1520. I'm actually in the process of moving, and I don't have the energy to learn Linux right this minute, not that I wouldn't want to later on. I just want an OS that will make the laptop usable, and Ubuntu is simple enough. What's the difference in Ubuntu and Debian for a regular person? How do they compare in speed? Stablility? Security? Viruses? Programs? From what I can see they look similar except Debian is hard and Ubuntu is easy (Knoppix is the only one that will pick up wirless internet for me but Knoppix's on the harder side) Maybe I just like Gnome but I've only experianced it in Ubuntu so I dunno if Gnome makes Ubuntu seem easier or if I just perfer Gnome's layout to KDE's.

[Werner P. Schulz]

... this is a Knoppix Forum! Please ask Google by yourself:

"Ubuntu vs Debian" and "Gnome vs KDE"

Greetings Werner * http://www.wp-schulz.de/knoppix/summary.html
Own Rescue-CD with Knoppix (Knoppix V6.4.4 remaster)

[Zaiella]

... this is a Knoppix Forum! Please ask Google by yourself:

"Ubuntu vs Debian" and "Gnome vs KDE"

Greetings Werner * http://www.wp-schulz.de/knoppix/summary.html
Own Rescue-CD with Knoppix (Knoppix V6.4.4 remaster)

Right, of course. Sorry about that.