Is Knoppix Safe for beginners?

[counterzone]

Can I ask... Is knoppix safe to use, will it add any partitions or edit anything? I am 15, once ran knoppix when I messed up windows repartitioning my harddrive to install someother linux distribution (and may have used just before that, dunno). So I dont know if it will have any effect on my PC, will it? Does it affect anything? Cus Knoppix does rule! Way better than windows. Please Help,

Chris!

Oh yeah im running XP home atm if that helps (NTFS), so is saving configs there dangerous as well?

[Cuddles]

SAFE?

Define safe?

From the CD, saving NOTHING, like configs, persistant home, etc... yes, it is about as safe as anything can be on a PC.

NTFS - no way - don't save anything to your NTFS partition, that is definately not safe.

Hard drive installing Knoppix to your system, no , not safe - I speak from experiance here - Knoppix opens up a whole slew of "nasties" to a beginner - protection, permissions, the "dreaded" (i'm biased on this issue) apt-get, is not for the "faint-of-heart".

I used to work with the "beginner's" in Win98 support, and just having people call because they loaded there complete hard drive onto there desktop, for reasons I have no clue, these kinds of people could barely find the power switch, and were "let loose" by the "guy who installed there system" to just run it "nilly-willy" - not a horrible thought, unless you think that "we" were the ones they called when they "trashed" there system, "we" were the ones who had to deal with "I just turned it on this morning, and it doesn't work, no, it was running fine last night, and no, I didn't do anything" stuff.

In my own words, some people are running with a byte right shifted by one bit

These are the "beginner's" I am speaking of, and with Linux/Debian/Red Hat/SuSE/Mandrake, etc... they have WAY too much power for there own good. It is a dissaster in waiting, IMHO.

I never realized just how much "power" Knoppix gives a user, until I trashed my own system, three times now, and didn't have a clue what I did wrong. I did what I knew I needed to do, and the way your "supposed" to do it, and ended up reinstalling Knoppix, from scratch, three times now. (currently, I am trying to salvage my system to save me from having to do a fourth)

Linux is designed for a "techie", or a "geek", or a person who is "intamately" familiar from the inside out, of there own system - add into this - is VERY familiar with there OS as well. Someone who reads OS manuals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and curls up to a good "Linux" publication for sleeping. That is what Linux is all about.

I have been running Knoppix, hard drive installed, now for more than six months, and I still don't have a clue. I rely heavily on this forum for assistance, and guidance, through the miriad of problems that not only I find, but that find me, and stalk me out.

So, I am sorry to say, if you are looking to "provide" Knoppix to a "beginner", you better be prepared for billions of support calls, either that, or they better be a "permanent" resident in this forum. Yes, even though I am a "six month user/admin" of Knoppix on my own system, I am but a wee newbie still, and a constant poster to this forum on "what next broke" on my own system.

But to answer your question again, Knoppix Live CD is SAFE, until you get the bright idea to "jump feet first into the deep end" of installing and running it - thats when you can get into trouble.

Just my 2 cents worth,
Cuddles

[counterzone]

So how do I make sure it doesnt save anything to the hd? When I open open office will it save temperary "saved" files or will any program save "temperary" files. Damn NTFS. Why do microsoft want to make life as complicated as possible. The only way I can be sure is to just take out my hard drive to run it. But that defeats the object of a live CD a bit. hmmm, tuffie. btw, any one like playing Counter-Strike? Oh and can anyone help with the problem about avoid saving files? Maybe in the next version they will make it safe for NTFS users to use knoppix safely and freely.

Thanks again,
Chris!

[zentu]

By Default ALL drives on your system are marked as read only, and you have to manually change it to a writable setting. The files that you save in knoppix (unless you save them to a thumbdrive, CD, Floppy, etc) are only saved into your memory, so when the system goes down, all of that data is lost, but it won't save anything to any where that is damaging.

P.s. the new version of knoppix is supposed to allow NTFS writing due to the fact that it is implemented in a way that allows it to use the windows drivers for it.
Note: (not mine from an aquantance at my LUG, who is a coder on that project) Currently, you are able to write to NTFS drives as long as the file length stays exactly the same (way to much of a hassle, so don't bother until you are a master of Linux and Windows).

[Cuddles]

CounterZone,

I guess you missread my reply, or I didn't explain it well enough, my fault...

Knoppix will not save anything unless you tell it to.

Knoppix's Live CD will create a RAM DISK in memory, and use that for any files, and the OS, nothing should "touch" any drive you have on your system...

Only one thing will cause Knoppix's Live CD to "ever" touch a hard drive, is if you don't have enough memory for a ram disk - in that case - it might ask you to allow Knoppix to place a SWAP DISK file on a hard drive, so it can use the file for lack of memory - that is all.

The Knoppix Live CD, that is using the CD to boot Knoppix with, is VERY SAFE. The designers of the "Live CD" considered the CD to be extremely safe, to the point that even hard drives it detects on the system, are by default, mounted as READ ONLY. Not even Windows does that, as if they would ever release a OS that could even run off a CD.

I consider the Live CD to be safer than abstanance from sex, so, that is pretty much as safe as safe can get - with the CD, you are free from viris attacks, worms, intrusion attacks, etc... because the best any "nasty" thing can hope for is attaching to the system files, which, are stored in memory, and flushed, and reinstalled from the read only CD, that is way safe. Problems are when you want to "change" something, then you need to save, mount read/write hard drives, etc... in most of those cases, something "can" get in and attach.

Running the Live CD is pretty much as follows: Booting causes a ram disk to be created, OS and configs are then loaded to the ram disk (memory), when you shutdown, or reboot, the memory is cleared, and thus, nothing is maintained from your boot, other than what is on the CD (which should be viri, worm, and such, clean).

The nice thing with the Live CD is, if you trash your system, OS, (Knoppix boot that is), when running Knoppix booted off the CD, you just down the system, and boot off the CD again - nothing permanent - and if you don't save, or "touch" any of your drives, remove the CD and boot back to what you had booted before - no harm done.

The Live CD is safe, after installing it to your hard drive, then the "unsafe" part gets introduced - if you open your hard drives and begin "saving" things, or configurations, etc.. then it begins to get "unsafe". But, the Live CD alone, it very safe.

Hope this helps,
Cuddles

[counterzone]

Thanks loads! Everybody who is involved/uses linux seems to be really nice! I got 3 responces in less than an hour! Wow! I would be waiting at least 3-5 days with microsoft. But im still too nervous to use it. Dont know why. Its just when i knackered the old harddrive me mum went up the wall cus her Manchester Business School Masters MBA work (or something) was on it. And she had been saving her work for it on it for 3 years. She only had one year to go. Luckilly she had already printed some of it out. But... was I in trouble. She made me sit by the PC and try to fix it for hours, even though it was plain to see that the entire harddrive was currupt. So... I then used knoppix to try and recover her files. I managed to retreive some of my doctor who episodes from an intact partition and Roller coaster tycoon 2, but..... couldnt get anything off the C partition which was the currupt one. So I borrowed a spair 4gig hd from my uncle, installed XP onto it and (again) couldnt seem to get anything off it. So.... I downloaded a tool from the internet that lets you rawly see the harddrive in hexidecimal values and small text strings. I spent hours going through a 17gig harddrive for individual email addresses of my mums freinds/contacts (i was never going to be able to recover entire files such as docs or other such office files.) I found only about 10 addresses. . So.... thats my life story and why im too scared to do anything now. I think forget about OS's and stick to php for now!

Thanks Loads!

Chris!!!

[OErjan]

only two things i know/suspect to be damaged by knoppix are a (1) monitor (see this posting http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10079& ) and a floppydrive. actually the floppydrive was more operator error but... he forced linux to make 1.74M floppies, the floppy never recovered.
the monitor MIGHT have been on its way prior to knoppix but...

[firebyrd10]

I have to agree with the posts above. Knoppix is about the safest OS you can get.

Not even Windows does that, as if they would ever release a OS that could even run off a CD.

as for a bootable windows cd you could try BartPE. Not offically a windows prodouct it can be quite usefull with its ability to fully read/write to any NTFS drive. (espially usefull for defrag. I don't have the address for the site currenlty so your going to have to google it. Aslso your going to need some files off of the windows install cd. (or install partition is your useing something like a HP which has a recovery partition.)

[Cuddles]

OErjan,

Well, yeah, I agree with you on those issues, but, those exact same issues could be easily duplicated through Windows, just as easily.

In Windows98 support, I had "way" too many people calling because there monitors weren't working - only to find they were "forcing" a video driver into Windows that they didn't have. Usual response to finding out that they didn't have "Spuer-Duper-Wiz-Bang-MegaMemory-High-End Video Card" installed, and simply a "ATI Basic 2 meg video card" was "Gee, I want that one instead" - forcing hardware to do things they were not "designed" to do, can cause any hardware to fail, under the "right" condiftions.

If you try to "force" a monitor to behave "way beyond" its capability, is just asking for trouble - I have a "old" monitor that can ONLY go up to 800 x 600 resolution, forcing it to go higher, only causes refresh and sync issues, i.e. non viewable screens - if that continued for too long, I think it could damage a monitor.

As for the floppy, yes, that could do some damage - I knew of a shareware program that could "hack" your command.com, back in the DOS days, so you could create "non-standard" formatted floppies - if you try to get a floppy "stepper motor" to do things they were not made to do, trouble is surely going to follow - as stated the "warning" with this shareware program reported.

I would also like to add one other "that I know of" issue. I saw this program somewhere, and never explored it any further, I think it was a Windows program, and of course, shareware... But, this program would allow you to change the RPM's of your hard drives. Again, as I said above, in this case, forcing a motor to "spin" faster than it was designed, could be a problem waiting to happen.

In some cases, like forcing a "burning" program for a CD Writter, to save at 24x instead of its recommended 4x (if it is actually a 4x speed drive), will probably only make "Digital Coasters", but with monitors, hard drives, and floppy drives, forcing them beyond what they are capable of doing, can cause problems. And, as I mentioned above, forcing a piece of hardware to use a driver that was not "designed" for it, could have same issues...

firebyrd10,
My statement still stands, sorry, but if it still requires any form of Windows to be installed on a hard drive, it isn't a "Live CD", IMHO.

In your deffense though, not even Knoppix's Live CD can do "Windows" as a "Live CD", it still requires "Windows" to be required as installed on your hard drive. But, thats just symantics.

I guess I should have said: Microsoft OS, instead of Windows OS. Even with all the problems of NTFS, I still think M$ make a ground-breaking move to using it for its file system structure. FAT, and any versions after its "initial" founding, is still just FAT. It was used way back when DOS first came out, and has simply been "Band-Aide" 'ed since then. Extremely "old" tech, IMHO. (even if the NTFS is a problem in Knoppix/Linux, it still stands as a "Next Generation", and "evolutionary" file system, and I liken NTFS to FAT, as I would see using rocks for building tools back in the cave man days, to using tools made from titanium now. (evolution)

Lastly, CounterZone,
If you, or your mom, is concerned about the "safety" of Knoppix on your mom's "business" computer, why not fork-out some moola for your own? Hit up EBay, can't be too expensive to find a computer that can manage the "minimum requirements" for Knoppix?

Here is what a "minimum" Computer "needs" to hard drive install (fully installed on the hard drive) from the documentation I have:

Pentium-class processor, preferably 300MHz or higher
64MB RAM
At least a 3 GB hard drive, or a partition of this size
And lastly, a Knoppix CD

I would also add into this, you should probably have a CD Drive, or a way to get the Knoppix CD "image" onto your system, either by the "poor mans install", or a physical CD Drive. Also, a faster processor means better performance in many games, or the operation of the OS, more memory is always better, and lastly, a larger hard drive is always better. But thats the minimum.

I am quite sure EBay, or even a friend, is trying to get rid of a system like this, because many of these kinds of systems are hitting the "door stop" catagory, or junk pile, due to increasing requirements for Windows versions of OS's. I even saw a "complete" system, being "given" away at the local library, a complete "server" class system, in fact, because they "upgraded" there servers to a new version of Windows. "It" couldn't handle the "new" Windows OS they got, so they were giving it away for $10. If I'd had known of "Knoppix" back then, it would have probably worked well with it. Heck, the monitor looked "beat up", but, was dirt-cheap for a complete system, even if I would have had to buy a new monitor for it.

zentu,
I think NTFS is going to plague Linux for a while, I think the file system is "protected" under law by Microsoft, I think, and therefor, unless someone can create a "emulator" or "hack" version, without duplication of this coding, it will continue to plague Linux OS's. Only time will tell, but I have heard that, as you said, they are "breaking" through some of its (NTFS) abilities. Again, as you said, not sure if I would try it out on my Windows installed (running) system of a NTFS hard drive, I know how "tempormental" Windows is on someone "else" touching its drives, but it is good they (Linux developers) are making some progress on the issues of "NTFS drives / don't touch" stuff.

Enuf said, I'm gone,
Cuddles

[OErjan]

i have it running with icewm and 2.6.5on a p100 with 72Mbram. kde wont work well on it nor will openofice, so i stick with mc, firefox, centericq, elvis, and xmms (yeah i know it is too much for the system but...)