In need of some help

I am trying to get hold of knoppix but I cant buy it off the internet and when downloading it takes ridiculous amounts of time (its currently saying the download will take 56 hours). Are there any other good ways of obtaining a copy of the live CD, such as magazines or a particular p2p?
Also when I do get hold of it what files do I have to put on the disk? Do I just need to burn the iso on there and nothing else, or are other files required?
Finally if I decide on getting a linux distibution and partitioning my hard drive to give it a place would windows have to be formatted?

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Originally Posted by samhainbaphomet

I am trying to get hold of knoppix but I cant buy it off the internet and when downloading it takes ridiculous amounts of time (its currently saying the download will take 56 hours). Are there any other good ways of obtaining a copy of the live CD, such as magazines or a particular p2p?....

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I'm not clear on what you're using to download. If you have a high speed connection, then 56 hours is certainly not a good number. I have seen some mirriors that indeed are about that slow, but when I hit one I fire up a download from a different mirror.

The P2p that is best for Knoppix is BitTorrent. My last BitTorrent download was very fast, but of course it can change depending on a number of conditions. Make sure that if you have a firewall running (including a home DSL/cable router) that you are forwarding the bittorrent ports to the bittorrent system. Bittorrent is designed to run much faster if you are sharing what you have with others than if you are leaching. Bittorrent is good in another way - it has a lot of checks built in that insure that file you get is good. I've downloaded a lot of bad Knoppix iso files from the Knoppix FTP and HTTP sites. Knoppix sites inparticular seem to frequently have a problem where a Windows client will try to download and the files will have Linux new lines translated to PC CR/LF pairs as if it was a text file rather than a binary file. This is not something you want after a 56 hour download.

If you're on a slow link (such as dial-up), find a friend with a high speed connection.

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Originally Posted by samhainbaphomet

Also when I do get hold of it what files do I have to put on the disk? Do I just need to burn the iso on there and nothing else, or are other files required?

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http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Downloading_FAQ

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Originally Posted by samhainbaphomet

Finally if I decide on getting a linux distibution and partitioning my hard drive to give it a place would windows have to be formatted?

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You don't format windows. You might repartition and reformat your hard disk. There's an awful lot of stuff in the hdd install forum that you might want to read.

Thanks for your help, I will definitly get bittorrent. Ill keep reading the board and posting to learn more over time :P

So far I have used Ares galaxy to download and the official knoppix site. the downloads on both of them takes ages.

You can download with dial up, find one that levels out around 5-8 hours and let it run all night. That is how I got my first version which was 3.2 or 3.4.

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Originally Posted by rrfish72

You can download with dial up, find one that levels out around 5-8 hours and let it run all night. That is how I got my first version which was 3.2 or 3.4.

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Come On. I learned math in an American school, and even I can see a problem with this:

The CD is around 700 meg bytes. To be fair, lets use 698 megabyte, the size of the 3.7 iso (although some have been highter).
But also to be fair, this is 698 x1024 x1024 bytes = 731906048 bytes. Since a dial-up connection users start and stop bits on each byte, this is 7319060480 bits, not counting any extra overhead bits (and there is going to be a lot of overhead, 10 to 15 percent would be my estimate, but lets completely ignore that and assume there was no protocol overhead and no delay at all between packets, no need to wait while one packet was responded to before getting the next. You think you could download the 7319060480 bits overnight? Divide by 8 hours gives 914882560 bits per hour. Divide by 60 to get 15248042.66 bits per minute. Divide this by 60 to get 254134 bits per second. Given that no dial up modem works at anywhere near this speed, and that we've ignored packet overhead, and all handshaking delays to respond to packets, and it's clear that you could not download a file the size of the Knoppix ISO in anywhere near over night. In fact, you would be very lucky to be able to do it in the 56 hours that samhainbaphomet mentioned.

Don't believe me then.

Ive decided to buy it with a book, I dont have the time or knoweledge to download (yet) :)

If i like it I will consider moving to linux permanantly, ive been advised to get Mandrake.

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

The CD is around 700 meg bytes. To be fair, lets use 698 megabyte, the size of the 3.7 iso (although some have been highter).
But also to be fair, this is 698 x1024 x1024 bytes = 731906048 bytes...

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Originally Posted by rrfish72

Don't believe me then.

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Harry Kuhman,
I have an advanced degree in math. So people believe me in such calculatations. This is a story.

I made a system which has an Internet connection as well. To estimate the connection level, I made the same calculation and told people, that even T1 is not so big deal, when you want to exchange gigabytes. Just to make a system test, I installed SDSL 768K in office to see how the whole system would work, and then upgrade connection.
You know what.
It works about a year. We are more than happy with it. And nobody even thinks about any upgrade. The actual up/download time is twice or more less then the calculated one. Sometimes salespeople cheat you that way. :lol:

I don't know why. Hope my provider will not recognize me by this post and will not cut my real speed. :wink:
(In case my home provider does recognize myself. I am talking about office, not home provider. It's the other one)

The point: Do math. Ever. But do not rely on math only. Especially in brave new Internet world.

um how fast do u think the download would go on a 56k using bit or any other program?

rrfish72 said it took for him a night.
May be you are so lucky as rrfish72 used to be. So try it.
You do have chances in real world. You don't have them in perfect world, where all specs are true.

Download speed: Been there, tried that. 56 hours is about right. I currently have a 'light' HS 'net package with D/L speeds of about 26 Kbs; a full 700 M disk takes 6-8 hours. My previous 56 K dialup ran at about 3.5 Kbs on a good day which is about 1/7 of my current capabilities, so a full 700 M disk would take about 7 times times as long =42 to 56 hours. This is actual tested d/l speeds, not theoretical calculated so should be reliable.

samhainbaphomet: You might try kanotix. It is a very good knoppix spinoff & there are sources to purchase disks: http://kanotix.com/info/index.php

Mandrake is a good easy to install distro but if you do much updating, custom setup etc you will want to try a debian based distro such as Knoppix or Kanotix. Apt-get makes this soooo much easier.

I got my first Linux system from Linux Format magazine which includes a disk or two with each issue & generally features a distro every 2nd or 3rd issue. There are other Linux magazines which do the same. I think Knoppix was on Linux World a couple of months ago.

You might also try to find other Linux users in your area who may have disks, check your local library. Most libraries maintain a listing of local activity & hobby associations & groups. If you are near a university, also try the university bookstore &/or contact the computer science dept at the university.

I even saw Mandrake & SuSe for sale at Future Shop once but both were out of date releases & rather overpriced.

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Originally Posted by CrashedAgain

Download speed: Been there, tried that. 56 hours is about right. I currently have a 'light' HS 'net package with D/L speeds of about 26 Kbs; a full 700 M disk takes 6-8 hours. My previous 56 K dialup ran at about 3.5 Kbs on a good day which is about 1/7 of my current capabilities, so a full 700 M disk would take about 7 times times as long =42 to 56 hours. This is actual tested d/l speeds, not theoretical calculated so should be reliable.

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I think I see the point that's confusing you. I suspect very strongly (heck, I know it for a fact) that your DSL Lite D/L speed is close to 26 KBs, not 26 Kbs. The difference is bits and bytes. Your getting around 26 K Bytes on your DSL lite speed (it's usually rated here at 256 kbs, since bit speeeds sounds better than byte speeds). Yes, at that speed, running full out from a "good" server (one that can feed as fast as your can receive), a full 700 meg BYTE download should take about 8 hours. In contrast a 56k modem is rated at 56 k bits. And back when I last used one in the US they were prohibited by our FCC at running any faster than 53 k bits. That wasn't a big issue though, because line quality was the major factor, and many users were lucky to get 48 k bits or less, Your 3.5 k sounds about right, but only if it's 3.5 KBs (3.5 K Bytes), not bits. If it was really bits then you would have had an awful line, but I doubt it since even a 24K modem or even an old 9600 baud modem would have been a lot faster.

So yes, you can download a 700 meg ISO on your DSL lite in 8 hours. But there is absolutely no way that anyone could download it overnight with a 56 k modem, no matter what kind of remarks he responds with.

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Originally Posted by NewGuy

I have an advanced degree in math. So people believe me in such calculatations.....

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You may have an advanced degree in math. I only have an education in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and thirty some years of work experience in computers, mostly focusing on networking and real time process control. But no one has ever downloaded a knoppix iso on a dial-up modem overnight. I've been working with modems since the days of 100 baud and 300 baud modems, and I know very well the hard and fast limitations of a 56k modem.

rrfish72 actually had the perfect solution. He said "Don't believe me then". I'm certainly willing to take that advice, and I would suggest that others do too.

As to your "story", it was certainly light on facts and even numbers for a story about math. Do you even know what the real download speed of your line is? There are plenty of ways to measure it, but your story seemed to imply that you do not. Perhaps your ISP simply raised the capacity and you didn't find out (many cable systems, for example, were marketed at 1.5 megabit but were later upgrader to 3 megabit. And the Cable company did not announce this until the upgrade was complete, although many users noticed this as it happened. There is another massive upgrade in progress now to 4.5 gig.) And, of course, there are people working with uncapped modems, as the basic cable system is capable of considerably more but the cable operators tell the modems what speed to limit themselves to. But none of that has much bearing on what can be done with a 56k dial up modem. After all, if your SDSL line is actually twice as fast as what you are paying for, a telco mistake perhaps, as you seem to think, how does that in any way change the upper limit of what a 56k dial-up modem can do? It doesn't change it one bit! It has nothing to do with what we are talking about. There are things that can be done to help dial-up (like compression can be applied to the connection), but these have their limits, and no one is moving 700 megByte of Knoppix iso file across a dial-up connection overnight, and even you're "I get twice what I expect" story doesn't really change that, or come close to the speed improvement one would need to make the overnight story work. Take rrfish72 's solution.

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Mandrake is a good easy to install distro but if you do much updating, custom setup etc you will want to try a debian based distro such as Knoppix or Kanotix. Apt-get makes this soooo much easier.

I got my first Linux system from Linux Format magazine which includes a disk or two with each issue & generally features a distro every 2nd or 3rd issue. There are other Linux magazines which do the same. I think Knoppix was on Linux World a couple of months ago.

You might also try to find other Linux users in your area who may have disks, check your local library. Most libraries maintain a listing of local activity & hobby associations & groups. If you are near a university, also try the university bookstore &/or contact the computer science dept at the university.

I even saw Mandrake & SuSe for sale at Future Shop once but both were out of date releases & rather overpriced.

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I will try and look in some different places, I will also keep an eye out for any magazines that have any live CD's :) I assumed Knoppix would be limited and not include too much, but after reading more about it it seems it has more to offer than I used to think. :)