Advantages of HD installation

[subarus]

Hi,
1st of all, thanks for developing/supporting an excellent software. I wish Mr. Klaus Knopper and his associates tremendous wealth and fame.

My questions: What are the advantages to a) install on HD versus b) Boot ISO residing on HD as oppose to c) cdrom ?

Let me attempt to answer my own questions, my intention is to perhaps initiate a meaningful discussions around this subject.

Booting/loading from cdrom obviously prevents me from using it for other purposes, for eg. viewing DVD, listening to CD without copying the files to hardisk in advance. But we all know the tremendous advantages that Knoppix cd offers such as portable linux without installation, not leaving trail on hd etc.

Installing on hardisk not only takes up 2.5G of space, I would assume that due to the need to transfer more uncompressed data, slows down the speed of loading an application.. is this true ?

Booting from ISO residing in HD prevents me to customise the system files, although right now I don't see any reason I would want to tinker with it yet. I realise that user preference can be saved and recalled later. So the best solution considering speed of loading, ability to customise, is to boot/load from HD residing ISO, save preferences on HD, and if system customisation is ever needed, uncompress on HD->modify->compress on ISO .. does this sound right ?

So how do you boot/load Knoppix ? and why ?

Mr. Knopper, if you are reading this.. thank you for freeing me from microsoft. I noticed that you are a pianist and composed a few pieces of your own, I can't wait to play them Now that I have more free time due to less computer problems.

[MattT]

I would assume that due to the need to transfer more uncompressed data, slows down the speed of loading an
application.. is this true ?

Uncompressing data takes cpu time so the hard drive install is much better when it comes to speed. One of the best advantages I see, when it comes to running from iso, is that you know every reboot will work exactly the same. In other words you can't brake Knoppix when it is on CD without doing physical damage.

[rickenbacherus]

I have Knoppix 3.2-04-10 installed and it works flawlessly for me. It is very much a standard Debian install (with a few minor differences of course). I wouldn't boot the .iso from hdd because you cannot move directories to their own partitions.

There is one advantage to having the .iso on your hard drive tho, you can easily keep up with Klaus and his very enjoyable habit of putting out an updated release quite frequently. For me though that isn't a priority because what I have works beautifully. My hardware is so old that I don't worry about the latest video/sound drivers, all my stuff works with the old ones. I did upgrade my install from 3.1 to 3.2 mainly to get KDE 3.1.1 and tabbed browsing in Konqueror.

To answer your question about the install taking 2.5G- well that's because there are so many programs included.

Anyway.....that's what works for me.