Difference between install and Poor Man's Install?

[stevesr0]

I am a nonadvanced user of linux in general. I have an old laptop on which Knoppix 5.1.1 works better than other distributions that I have tried. I would like to install Knoppix as an operating system in the conventional way on this box (and I am aware that others have done this, but I have taken seriously Harry Kuhlman's stern advice not to do this.

I have tried the Debian Live-CD, which did detected my sound card (a major problem with other distributions other than Knoppix) but ran into a problem trying to connect wirelessly to the internet with an Orinoco card that works automatically with Knoppix (a problem with knetworkmanager, I think).

So, unless I can figure out how one can sonfigure and launch the wifi connection without knetworkmanager, a Knoppix "install" looks like the best idea.

Apparently, while a "regular" install to a hard drive risks all kinds of difficulties, installing an image of a Knoppix Live-CD to the hard drive is not a great problem as well as allowing the use of the CD drive after booting up.

I have looked at the howto on the Poor Man's Install, but before I try to do it I wanted to hear opinions about whether this is a reasonable choice for a non expert like myself.

Pertinent facts about the system:

Old Pentium 266, with 192 megs of ram. Knoppix 5.1.1 is launching fine from the live CD (although I sometimes get "file and media protocols unexpectedly quit" messages (which don't seem to interfere at all with the system's function).

It contains a primary partition which holds a win98 os and an extended partition which includes a partition for a linux operating system (Caldera Open Linux) and a swap partition. The extended partition is about 3 gig.

It would seen feasible to delete the existing linux partitions and use the 3 gigs to hold the poor man's install and swap partition, assuming this is enough space.

My basic goal: to use this old system to work in Linux and thereby learn about it and hopefully convert over to a primarily Linux user. I need a hard drive install inorder to speed up the system, since it is (almost) unbearably slow working via the CD.

Thanks very much for any advice, information, suggestions, referrals, etc.

Steve

[Harry Kuhman]

A poor mans install is a copy os the compressed file on the hard disk, still in compressed form. Your use that just as you do the CD. the upside is that a hard disk is faster than a cd, the downside is that you still have a compressed file that can't be added to or changed.

Other Knoppix installs try to put the uncompressed files on the hard disk. They require more space, but in theory you should be able to install other software, update packages and do other Linux like things. Unfortunately, because of a design choice of Knoppix, this theory usually fails and non-poor man installs often have problems, either immidately (networking often fails for example) or after installig new software or updating software.

If your notebook runs the CD then you should be easily able to install Debian or some other Linux distro intended for hard disk on it. This would allow you to install only the software you use (potentially saving a lot of disk space from stuff Knoppix drags along that you don't care about) and install other software safely. That is my suggested approach.

[hat_monkey]

Here is what you do.

FIRSTLY GET A USB plug-in EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE AND BACK-UP EVERYTHING.

Next install knoppix5.1 to your hard drive from your CD.

************
Then copy the downloaded Knoppix.iso into this folder:

/home/knoppix/Knoppix-your-version-and-details.iso

***********

Then you can play around with you HD install to your hearts content, ugrading and updating as you choose. If/when something goes awry then it is time to use your CD knoppix to resolve any issues and recover data to your external HD

Now that the Knoppix.iso is on your machine (as above in ************* ), you can boot knoppix like so; at the live CD initial boot screen type:

knoppix bootfrom=/dev/hda1/home/knoppix/K*.iso

which is then a poormans install boot and is faster than live-CD and will let you do anything as before from the live-CD eg. resolve issues and recover files, ect.

note that you now have two ways to use knoppix and if your internet connection/peripherals go awry on the HD install you can still use your live-CD and transfer things (like packages.deb, etc) to your HD install.

Remember that the more people testing knoppix on HD install and giving information about problems and testing, the faster it is possible to proceed with the knoppix developement.