URGENT - Knoppix or DEBIAN ofr HD install ???????

URGENT - Should I uninstall KNOPPIX from my HD and use another distro such as DEBIAN.

I've been using KNOPPIX 3.6 and 3.9 installed on my laptop HD for over a year and love it.
I now want to run kismet (wireless sniffer) and cant get it to work. I was prepared to hack around and get it working then i read this on this MB:

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t just amazes me that people call themselves new Knoppix users but yet they insist on installing what is intended as a Live CD to their hard disk.

In my experience I would expect Knoppix to detect your ethernet interface just fine, and in fact you haven't posted any information on if it does or not. Failing to properly access the Internet is an extremely common problem after a hard disk install. I don't have any numbers to back this up, but from two years of watching the forums I would say that it is the most common problem after a hard disk install and it certainly has been going on for at least two years. I would suggest a very simple experiment: Boot Knoppix the way God intended, from CD, and see if it detects your ethernet that way. If it does and you have a system that gives you a DHCP setup then you will likely be on the Internet as soon as the boot finishes. If you are using DLS and for some crazy reason are not using a router, then you likely will also have to deal with PPPoE setup. But you should be able to determine if Knoppix can detect your card this way. If it does then your problem is not Knoppix lacking the right driver, it is the very common problem of Knoppix failing to run the network properly after a hard disk install.

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This has really surprised me. I want a LInux HD install on my laptop.

So my big question is should I ditch Knoppix and use something else ? Debian ?

Well, I'm running a HD install of Knoppix. Granted it's a pretty simple set up, no network but diallup.

Perhaps the best advice is to install Kanotix to HD. Now, Kanotix is Knoppix based (and there's quite a lot of interchange between the communities) but while Kanotix is now a live CD designed to be installed to HD, Knoppix has developed into the supreme live CD. Sure, you can install to HD, but there are issues with apt-get caused by Knoppix taking bits and peices from all the Debian trees (while Kanotix only takes from Sid).

When this install breaks, I'll switch to Kanotix.......... ;-)

Should either not pick up your network settings correctly, you can generally just boot the live CD and copy them over..........

This is purely a personal opinion & does not reflect the official opinion of Knoppix.net nor does it reflect the opinion of the Knoppix developers. My recommendation is based on the multitude of problems I see in the forums. I believe beginning Linux users or newbies should not install Knoppix to the hard drive. I also must mention that yes Knoppix is based off of Debian, but Debian developers, mentors & helpers do not consider a Knoppix hard drive install to be truly Debian. Thus, they will not attempt to support a Knoppix installed HD system.

A car is not designed for a good night of sleep. You can sleep in a car but unless you are dead tired, it is something that probably should not be done. Knoppix is not designed to be installed to the hard drive. It is designed to be a bootable CD. Sure it CAN be installed to the HD but it unless you are very experienced, it is something that should not be done. Or in other words, a hammer is a good hammer but make a poor knife.

There are email mailing lists, howto guides, & forums where people are telling others that a Knoppix HD install is OK for newbies. I feel that they may not be fully informed and may cause more problems that they fix. A Knoppix install on a HD is very difficult to administrate, add/remove software & get new drivers. Some may feel that they can deal with the oddities & the quirks, but if it were all easy, then why are there so many people with problems after a HD install. A Knoppix HD install will most likely break something, usually networking. A perfect real example of such is this topic within the past week: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19522 "Help please - how do I install a ethernet card driver???" Read that quickly & you will realize that we had to support this user with way more technical geeky commands than you would normally find in a HD install of a normal distro.

So who cares about my opinion on whether or not Knoppix should be installed to the HD. What do Debian developers & users say in regards to the HD install of Knoppix? Debian users/devs on #debian on IRC freenode.net deny support to Knoppix users & tell them to go to Knoppix.net for suppport. See also these Debian mailing list posts about knoppix.
2004
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/.../msg01452.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/.../msg01494.html

2005
http://lists.debian.org/debian-mento.../msg00203.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-mento.../msg00208.html

It is my opinion, that if new user want a boot from CD drive then they should use a Debian based live CD like Knoppix. If they want to install Knoppix to the HD (which is really a modified Debian) then skip Knoppix & install Debian 3.1 (released Mon June 6). If they want a pre-configured user-oriented desktop PC, not server, distro based on Debian then use Ubuntu (GNOME desktop) or Kubuntu (KDE desktop) or see RedHat backed Fedora Core 4 (released June 13). If they want a real noob friendly desktop Debian based distro & are willing to pay a small yearly price for support & software updates then they can use Linspire.

I agree with UnderSc.
With broadband in hand I think the better way is the debian-installer, just an iso to burn in a mini-cd and download what you need. Notice as the best-ranked in distrowatch Ubuntu come with 2 cds: 1livecd and 2installcd, one is hammer the other knife ;)

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Originally Posted by maxIT

just an iso to burn in a mini-cd and download what you need....

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I agree with James too. I have not had good experiences with the small CD and download everything from the web approach though. While this might work fine for the expert who will get the install right the first time, I found that I needed to go back and do several installs before I got things right. This was painfully slow to have to download stuff from the web during every install, and wasteful of bandwidth too. I would have much rather had a nice full CD or even two (that could have downloaded overnight, not while I was trying to get something done) and then been able to experiment with installing Debian with different choices until I was happy with the result. As it was I eventually settled for something that sorta worked rather than go back and do a slow web install yet again.

I have noticed that high speed internet access seems to be the deciding factor when choosing a install method for Debian 3.1. I live & work very close to a high speed Debian mirror. At work I can get packages at 1.0 to 1.3 Megabytes/sec sustained. At home I get packages at 600 to 800 KB/sec sustained. So for me the debian-31r0a-i386-netinst.iso disc is what I use. If someone is on a monthly quota broadband connection or on a dialup line, then I would suggest that they get the first 2 & maybe up to the first 4 CD ISO images. Or they can order the whole 14 CD set for about $30 dollars. If I was still stuck on dialup then I would immediatley jump on the 14 CD set so that I would not be dependent the slow dialup internet link for packages. Here is a linuxquestions.org thread that is running sorta parallel to our discussion.

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Originally Posted by UnderScore

.... If someone is on a monthly quota broadband connection or on a dialup line, then I would suggest that they get the first 2 & maybe up to the first 4 CD ISO images. Or they can order.....

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James,
Still too many choices for me. I don't know from the above if the 4 CD set has any advantage over the 2. I have opened the other thread in another window and will read it, but I'm still trying to work my way through all the Knoppix postings since I've last been here. So let me give a few details and ask a specific question and hopefully you'll give me the benefit of your experience: I don't use dial-up or have a bandwidth quota. I do have DSL at 1.5 mbd tops, not DSL extreme or cable which would be a lot faster. When I last installed Debian I had a lot of problems just getting the partitioning the way I wanted it (I blame a very cryptic dialog, and also saw that I wasn't alone in experiencing this). I would be extremely happy with getting applications from the web with app-get after the install, but would like to be able to do enough of an install to get Debian up and working without ever having to go back to the Internet during the install. What do I want? The 2 CD set you mentioned? The 4 CD set? Is there a single CD that will do it for me, other than the "business card" CD? (How has Linux managed to get so bloated that a basic install would need 2 CDs?) Even a link to a fast US mirror would be very welcome. Thanks.

The 14 CD set is every package in the Debian stable respository, about 9000 packages. Which is way more that you or I will ever need.
CD #1 has the most common packages on it. From CD 1 you can install a basic desktop (both KDE & GNOME) or setup a basic server.
For those folks constrained by a slow internet connection, then I would recommend either only 1 or just CDs 1 & 2. I have read Debian developers ranked the most popular/frequently installed packages & then build each CD from that lists. This means that the average user will find it very unlikely to ever need a package from CDs 5-14.

Summary: If you need a desktop system install CD & will not be doing sysadmin setups of servers or less popular programs then CD#1 is all you will need.

The following is my install log from the time I saw your post at 1:30pm Eastern.
I booted a test PC (Pent III 833MHz, 384 MB RAM, 32x CDROM, 20 GB HD, hda1 is windows NTFS, hda2 is a ext3, hda3 is swap) with CD 1 of Debian 3.1r0a, 650MB (Debian sarge). I used the boot prompt cheat code linux26 to force it to install the 2.6 kernel. Both 2.4 & 2.6 are included but the 2.4 kernel is used by default.

You can follow along by using this gallery from OSDir.com http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/sl...se=361&slide=1

The hard drive partitioner is not as easy as qtparted or as easy as Suse/Redhat/Mandrake. In the menu I selected the manual partition entry. The I selected hda2. I told it to use it (by default it will not use existing data partitions so that the existing partitions are safe from accidental erasure). I told it to use ext3fs and use it as the root partition. By default it found the hda3 swap partition & automatically set it to be formatted as swap. Once I was sure, I confirmed by partition choices & it formatted the partitions & began installing the base packages. After it finishes the base packages, it will ask to install grub to either the MBR or the first sector of the root partition. It applys grub to the system & then ejects the CD & reboots the system.

Now it boots of the installed base system & brings up a welcome screen. At this point I put CD 1 back in the drive. I confirm my choices for clock, timezone, root passwd, add a new user with passwd. Then it will scan the CD for the package lists as it is building a new dpkg lists for the system. It will ask if I have another CD. I respond No. Next it automatically uses apt-get to connect to the Debian security updates at security.debian.org. Then it will quickly load a package from CD & bring up another menu. This one allows me to select what package categories to install. Choices are Deskto enviornment, Web server, Print server, DNS server, File server, Mail server, SQL database, manual package selection.

I choose only the Desktop environment. It tells me it has found 329MB of packages from the archives (the CD) & will after unpacking will use 936MB. The next screens are to select the video hardware & configure the X server. In some cases the HW autodetection routines will automatically pickup all the details. On other systems with different HW, it will not, and you will have to choose the right X drivers etc. After this it will do the standard dpkg "selecting foobar" "Unpacking foobar".
Right now it is 1:56pm and the dpkg system is still setting up the packages. At 2:01pm it brings up a menu for choosing the style of email delivery. This menu is way too confusing for newbies. It defauts to local delivery; not on a network & that is what I choose. It now prompts for the username or the person to receive the root & postmater mail. I choose real-root. Then it tells me that everything is done & thanks for choosing Debian. I hit OK & it brings up gdm & then displays a GNOME login screen. I login as the user I created: james. It loads up a Debian styled GNOME 2.8 desktop. I go to actions, logout, hit OK to confirm. Back at the login screen. This time I go to the Session menu & choose KDE. I login as james & it asks me if I want to make KDE the default dekstop. I click "Make Default". It loads up the KDE personalizer. USA & English are already selected as county & language. All the choices are really subjective so I choose what makes me happy. It then loads up KDE 3.3.2.
Time is 2:06pm.
Total time 36 minutes to install both KDE & GNOME as desktop Debian system.

Thanks James. Great information. You might even consider cutting and pasting and a little editing into a Wiki article, maybe a title like "Installing true Debian rather than Knoppix".

James: One more question about Installing from the network rather than from CD. I, like you, have several computers running at home. Have you ever set up the files so that you could install from a system on your local network rather than from across the Internet? That would seem an ideal system for me and would allow me to install quite quickly on some of the older PC's that I would like to experiment with. Any tips on doing this? Again, I don't see that I would need or want the full set of packages on my local network, just the first CD or maybe the first two, just enough to get a basic install up and running. I'm still quite happy with going to the Internet to get any additional packages that I would want to put on a system (as long as I can avoid confusion about where I'm going for what).

I haven't done anything like a local Debian repository or a full Debian mirror quite yet. I have however been reading Debian-Administration.org which as a sysadmin, seems to be one of the nicest down to earth places for Debian & Linux admin info. Appropriate articles are How manage a partial mirror with low bandwidth or Question: Manage updates of more then one machine?.

I might as well let you in on my summer project. I hope to setup a local package mirror this summer since I will be setting up a small office LAN for a local church. The church is expected to "go live" around sept 1. I expect to use to a variety of Linux distros. Probably ClarkConnect 3.1 (3.1 to be released soon) for the firewall & proxy which is based on Centos 4. The church is not qualified as a residence so it will have to get business class broadband cable or DSL. It costs at least double if not closer to triple per month, but I don't see any way around that. The upside is that they will get a bigger upstream capability.

Centos 4 is based off the freely available source code packages of RedHat Enterprise Linux 4. I use & administrate RHEL2.1/3 systems at my job. RedHat has setup RHEL 3 & 4 with a support life of at least 5 years. Just like the Debian, Centos is community based & they will be around for a a long time. The full price of RHEL4 for a small or medium business is no big deal as it comes with support. A new startup non-profit lke a church can't afford to drop big money on software so Centos4 is good compromise between enterprise grade Linux & free community Linux. So I will probably use Centos 4 for email, file sharing & printing.

Then I will use Debian 3.1 for workstations and perhaps any other server need that might arise. Sounds like a lot of servers but really only 2 or 3 with 1 as a spare. The workstations will be older PCs (approx 6 years old) running either KDE, IceWM or xfce as RAM & CPU permits.

The church admin assistant (secretary) will run a Debian Linux box. The youth leader (older teens & college age) will probably have a Debian Linux box. The pastoral staff already have their own Windows or Apple Mac laptops. Trying to get them to switch would be a major undertaking so they will stay on whatver platform they are on now. I am not worried about windows viruses or exploits since I will lock down each windows laptop, make the user a non-administrative user, & will force automatic patches/updates & virus signatures.

I will let you know my progress in regards to a local Debian package mirror.