Why should I use Knoppix?

[giant_toaster]

Right, after running the live cd a couple of times, (i have Intel Integrated Graphics, Knoppix won't let me get the resolution any higher than 600x480 so it's a bit hard to see whats going on!), it does look good, if not a bit bewildering. Things that on Windows are just simple, such as connecting to the internet through my wireless network at home are very hard on Knoppix, and I still can't work out how to do it.

Basically the question is:

"What is better about Knoppix (and perhaps Linux in general?) than using Windows?"

Why would an average user, such as myself, want to use it?

Maybe if I can be convinced I will persevere with it!

Rich

[UnderScore]

Someone else was frustrated & he too wanted to use knoppix or give up. You can find that discussion here http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19169

[tdjokic]

Why would an average user, such as myself, want to use it? Every 'average user' must find answer for himself. This is not the question 'to be or not to be' convinced.

[zour]

Why don't you try the live CD? What will it cost you? a 79 cent blank cd and possibly 5 minutes of your time?

[Cuddles]

giant_toaster,

Considering that UnderScore has already linked to a thread that I have contributed to, along the same lines of what you are dealing with, I will control myself, and make a short post here (amazing as it sounds).

giant_toaster,

As others have said, it becomes a individual decision, for me, I got tired of the virus attacks, security patches that never fixed anything, trojans, windows updates almost on a daily basis, and still, an unstable system. I did VB and PDS developing of software, and every time I compiled a program, I had to reboot... Every time I ran a backup of the system, I had to reboot... Every time I ran a virus scan, I had to reboot... Every time windows needed to do a windows update, or security patch, I had to reboot... Every time I installed a new program, I had to reboot... It was such, that, my system spent more time rebooting, than, actually running.... With Linux, I do all the things above, but, the system can stay up, no more reboots, no more "dwindling" resources, or memory, to the point that, you couldnt even open a Notepad window, without having to reboot.

With Linux, I play DVDs, re-write CD-RWs, compile kernels and install them, install new programs, remove them, and have had uptimes on my system in the months, not days. My longest stretch of uptime, is around 72 days, and many "Linux" users can attain months.

For me, Linux works for me, it does what I want, with a little learning, but, the give and take was worth it, for what I have gained in the deal. You decide. I would say, if all you can get is 800x600 from your install, then I dont think thats a positive, but, after you install Linux... It should be able to handle better resolutions, if not, for me, it wouldnt be worth it... Having a "somewhat current" NVidia video card, I can attain a nice 1280x1024 resolution. But, then again, this is all a "personal" decision.

Hope this helps,
Ms. Cuddles

[giant_toaster]

I do really want to use Linux. Having played with the Live CD for a while it seems like there might be a lot to learn... Is it possible to get my Belkin USB wireless connection working using it for example?

Having done some research it seems that Knoppix doesn't support my Intel 82865G Integrated Graphics. Would other Live CDs of other distributions? Or is this something that will be generally true of Linux in general? 640x480 is not good!

To get Knoppix working as I would like what would I need to buy?

My hard drive is unpartitioned and formatted NTFS under XP. Should I buy another cheap hard drive and install say, Debian, on that? Does Linux work with NTFS, or should I have it formatted FAT32?

I would need another graphics card I guess. I can get a PCI card for £60. Would another distribution solve this problem?

Will my USB wireless stick ever work?

Thanks!

I want to be able to use Knoppix, but don't want to spend too much upgrading my PC!

Rich

[Harry Kuhman]

My hard drive is unpartitioned and formatted NTFS under XP. Should I buy another cheap hard drive and install on that? Does Knoppix work with NTFS?
No. If your hard drive has NTFS on it it has one or more partitions, only a partition can be NTFS.

Perhaps you are trying to say that there is only one large partition, but if so that is certainly not what you said.

Knoppix can read NTFS partitions, but no Linux can safely write to NTFS partitions, it will corrupt the disk (a little gift from Microsoft, who seem to be continuing efforts to make sure it stays this way).

There are tools like Partition Magic that can resize a NTFS partition to make space for a FAT partition, but they advise you to backup everything before using them. If you really could back up everything you might not need the tool at all, just have that backup, reinstall making a smaller partition, and reload from the backup. If for some reason this can't be done then you likely don't have a true backup. Adding a second drive is certainly a very reasonable alternative; if you shop around you should be able to find great prices on a good drive with lots of capacity. Many of us also have older smaller drives that can be added if large amounts of storage are not a key issue.

[giant_toaster]

I didn't realise that NTFS could only exist on a partition. On an unrelated note, will any 3.5" internal hard drive work in my Dell, or do I have to be careful which one I buy? I have room for it, but are the connections different or anything?

Is there anywhere I can download drivers for my Intel graphics to work?

[nishtya]

Your video resolution problem is probably less a driver thing than a video memory thing. Is it a Dell? Known issue, you need to go into the bios and bump up the video memory from the default to 8mb (there are only two choices). Some other distros (like kanotix and ubuntu) have a startup script that ups the video cache without you having to go into the bios. Either way, this should help get you a higher resolution.

[Harry Kuhman]

... On an unrelated note, will any 3.5" internal hard drive work in my Dell, or do I have to be careful which one I buy?.....
I can't see any model number of your Dell given. so we can't tell you what drives may and may not work. You likely can find things that will not work. The most common drives now are IDE/ATA and SATA, the SATA being the newer ones that use a serial interface. Assuming that you use IDE and not SATA or some other technology, there is still the issue of how large of an IDE drive can your computer support. There are a number of different limits that different hardware or BIOS systems will hit. For example, some systems about 5-6 years old will use up to a 120 gig drive just fine, but can't use a 160 gig drive because it just can't address that much space. There were other limits with smaller drives in the past, it wasn't all that long ago we hit and past 20 gig limits and even an 8.3 gig limit. So you should do your homework and understand what drives can work in your system.

Another issue is power. Some OEM systems save money by providing just enough power for the hardware the OEM plans on building into that system (as opposed to home brew systes that tend to use stock size power supplies and if built by someone knowledgable who plans ahead have plenty of extra power for extra drives). I wouldn't expect supplying power for a second drive to be a serious problem, but I can't make you any promises. If Dell offered the system with 2 drives though then you likely can add a second one yourself (it's very unlikely that they swapped power supplied on the single drive and the two drive model; it's less expensive to just make one power supply).

[giant_toaster]

Right, got the resolution up to 1024x768, which is most my monitor can support. Simply changing bios video memory setting to 8mb did it. One thing checked of the list!

So, next real hurdle is getting my Belkin wireless USB adaptor working. How can I do this? I have tried looking through some of the settings, there is somewhere I can choose from a list of drivers to install but I can't find this particular thing. Should I be looking for a more general name, such as something to do with the chip in the USB stick, rather than simply Belkin USB Wireless adaptor?

Any help with this would be great.

Secondly, my soundcard works so far as I can get the test sound in control center to play, but can't get any sound anywhere else. Playing MP3s gives the error that the card may be being used elsewhere...

It's a PCI soundblaster live! 24-Bit card.

Also, Is there any way I can save a config file I can load when I boot from the Live CD? So I don't have to go through the same thing every time I boot? I can't leave it on forever!

I guess getting the internet working is my main priority, so I can type this from Knoppix instead of Windows.

Thanks so much for your help, this forum is incredible!

Rich

[MindJester]

Your video resolution problem is probably less a driver thing than a video memory thing. Is it a Dell? Known issue, you need to go into the bios and bump up the video memory from the default to 8mb (there are only two choices). Some other distros (like kanotix and ubuntu) have a startup script that ups the video cache without you having to go into the bios. Either way, this should help get you a higher resolution.

I run KNOPPIX on my Dell Dimension 3000, changed the BIOS to 8MB. that doesn't help completely, try the command "knoppix DMA" (W/O the quotation marks of course). Try that, hope it Helps!!!