Knoppix download

[wiwerion]

I intend to download knoppix. But i am not sure which iso type, CD or DVD, i should download. In short what is the difference between cd and dvd knoppix releases. Second question,beacuse of bandwidth problems, I intend to download the DVD release using p2p programs, Emule or Bittorent. But how safe they are? Is the file that i am going to download using emule, same with the one that reside in Knoppix server. I dont have enough knowledge about p2p systems but my friend advised me not to download knoppix dvd file from emule servers. He told me that any user who shared the Knoppix DVD file in her computer , might have changed the iso file and could have incorporated malicious components into the iso file, so my computer would be infected. Is it possible? How can i download DVD safely from anywhere.? Thanks.

[Harry Kuhman]

The CD has a lot of software, the DVD even more. I suggest that you start with the CD. A CD is always a good things to have, since it will run on some computers that lack a DVD. If you like it you can always get the DVD later, if not then you have only downloaded and burnt the CD.

I really urge you to read all of the Downloading FAQ in the wiki.

BitTorrent is very safe, although there are some clients out there that have been packaged with some bad stuff. And any p2p application is not safe if you download bad stuff. But if you get the official Bittorrent client and you download from the official Knoppix BitTorrent tracker found by the "Get Knoppix" near the top of this page you'll be fine. Be sure to set up your system properly for BitTorrent (open the port in your firewall for BT and forward it properly in your router).

I wouldn't use e-mule on a dare. And there is no Official e-mule feed, so what you get that way is high risk.

What you get from the BitTorrent tracker is a "torrent" file. It contains hashing information on each logical block of the file and the complete final file. If anyone has changed their copy of the ISO the hashes will not match and BitTorrent will get another copy of that block elsewhere. So the file that you get will be good. If you are really paranoid then you can also check the file against the md5 sum that you will also download in the package. Since you get blocks for many different users it is extremely unlikely that any user could manage to change blocks in such a way that they could change the md5 file contents and make it match what you dwnload, and also make these new blocks match the hash values in the torrent file. And if you are really really paranoid then you could download just the tiny md5 file from one of the mirrors after you download the ISO by BitTorrent and confirm with that file that your ISO matched s the original official ISO. It's overkill, but you have that as a way to rule out any corruption introduced by someone else on the p2p network.

BitTorrent will be fast if you are configured properly, faster than the mirrors and much much less prone to downloading problems.