New to linux and knoppix and some newbie question.

I downloaded and burned knoppix onto a cd-r last week. I have been in the windows world as sys admin for years now and always intended to give linux a try. I hesitated becasue my home system is a 700mhz celerone, 64Meg,4mb vram,6gb hd, laptop. And I have it about 80% full with windows programs that I could not get remove because of work.

Anyhow knoppix seems perfect for at least testing out linux.

I noted that somewhere in an faq I read it said that if the machine that you boot the cd from has less the 128mb of ram the knoppix will boot up but will stay in the text mode. Ok then no problem.

Imagine my surprise when KDE desktop came up on my laptop.

1)Is this normal?

2)Will it take 30-45 mintutes to boot every time I use the cd, as it did this time?

I could not use my usb mouse on the laptop, I had to use the touchpad that is housed in the laptop case(the mouse is connect to a 4 port usb hub, along with my zip drive,printer, and webcam.)

3) Can someone tell me how I get the usb items recongized?

Thanks in advance.

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Originally Posted by Shaba1

Imagine my surprise when KDE desktop came up on my laptop.

1)Is this normal?

2)Will it take 30-45 mintutes to boot every time I use the cd, as it did this time?

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Dude! I think you might have a world record! Getting KDE to run w/ only 64M is definitely an accomplishment. You might try creating a linux swap partition if possible. Also try using a lighter desktop like flux. Just tell Knoppix at the boot: knoppix lang=us desktop=fluxbox

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3) Can someone tell me how I get the usb items recongized?

Thanks in advance.

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See if your devices are recognized n boot:

dmesg|grep usb

This will show your devices:

cat /proc/bus/usb/devices

To see what drivers are loaded:
lsmod

I use a logitech usb cordless mouse and these are the drivers loaded for it.


usbmouse 2008 0 (unused)
keybdev 1828 0 (unused)
mousedev 4084 2
hid 20164 0 (unused)
input 3104 0 [usbmouse keybdev mousedev hid]
usb-ohci 18248 0 (unused)
usbcore 57548 1 [usb-storage usbmouse hid usb-ohci]

Hi

It's pretty normal to get a GUI interface with 64 Mb. I used knoppix in my compaq 1277 with 64 mb and works fine (used in development with java)

You will need 128 if you want to use Open Office. There is no way that OO will run in less than 128. I try in a machine with 512 and still takes all the time of the world to init.

With your machine you will get a lot of fun using knoppix. But if you want some more speed and still want GUI you should try Damm Small Linux or "Feather Linux" (ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/featherlinux/feather-0.3.3.iso) (both stripped versions of knoppix)

If you don't want to wait so long for KDE and want to try out the command line, use the "knoppix 2" boot string.

Welcome to the world of Linux!

Good Luck,

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Originally Posted by mcaycedo

Hi

It's pretty normal to get a GUI interface with 64 Mb. I used knoppix in my compaq 1277 with 64 mb and works fine (used in development with java)

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Running Xwindows on 64M was not the question but rather getting KDE to run w/ 64M.

No problem. I use the standard knoppix disk in my laptop (k6 2 450, 64 mb ram) and I was able to use the KDE desktop, and after shutdown some of the eyecandy (menu transparency and animations) the system was pretty usable with KDE.

Really it shouldn\t be a problem. Ive done it in other distros and the idea KDE is a memory hog is somewhat over rated. Sure its fatter than flux or waimia but once its loaded then it uses incrementally less memory for pure KDE apps.

Turning off transparancy etc. is good and preloading konqueror etc. but the reason this probably worked was perhaps the lack of other devices that needed loadable modules.

I tried quite a few WMs on my laptop and eventually went back to KDE.... just cos its nice.
Also i tend to use kmail and quite a few KDE apps by preference so it seems to be reasonably efficient.

Today is my day for irony though....
I hosed KDE trying to get k3b 10 working....and as I trye its from ICEWM....

Thanks for all the replies. But you need to remember that I am totally new to the *nix world. I started out in the days of the Commodore 64, moved from there to DOS and then on to Windoze. I am very verse with M$ operating systems and should be getting my MCSA in the next three months. But when you guys say "want to try out the command line, use the "knoppix 2" boot string. " I am lost. How do I get to the command line when the CD just gose thru its own boot sequence after I set boot from CD in CMOS. All is a boot: prompt Then I did typed something and the cd ran for about 35 minutes during which a lot of infor passed on the screen I answer no to most of the prompt and yes to a 60mb swap partition set up as a file in the root of the C:\directory.

I guess what I am saying is that somewhere there should be a step by step instruction manual that explains what all those lines are and what they are doing (with screenshots :D )

Is there such a think that I can read in a pdf format and not from within linux itself, or the I can print out and hold in my hand while I am booting up knoppix?

You mean all the messages posted on screen while its booting... That's the initilaization of various services and loading of drivers.

Before all that happens your presented with the inital boot logo and a prompt... probably a message that says press F2 for help. At that prompt or from the F2 menu you can enter cheatcodes which pass options ff to the kernel prior to booting. Many of these diable poertions of hardware detection, select the default desktop window manager, screen resolution, language and key layout, etc. Lists of cheatocdes can be found if you browse the top level of the CD when nopt booted from it. You can also find them in the Docs section of this site.

Using

knoppix 2

would send you to text-only mode, commonly called run level 2.

Thanks arkaine23.
I looked up some info on flux(fluxbox) on the web and will study.

I will definately be back with more questions. Right now the only thing that makes me hesitant was the amount of time it took(45 minutes) from when I put the cd in until the time the KDE desktop came up.

I have never seen it take more than a couple of minutes to boot up. I know KDE checks for a minimum of 81mb ram or ram + swap. If not enough memory is available it's suppposed to default to use twm, a very basic window manager.

Icewm is pretty ncie, its minimal and sort of setup like windows. Fluxbox is also pretty neat since you can access your menus just by clicking the desktop. XFCE is sort of in between icewm and KDE in its level of complexity and features. In knoppix, there's also windowmaker but I've never used it. So that's 6 window managers in all to choose from, and the default is the most resource hungry. I'd try out Icewm, fluxbox, or xfce to see if the long boot-time goes away.

It's also possibkle the hardware detection is having trouble with the video card/monitor and has to retry several drivers before finding one that works. In which case there are some cheatcodes for framebuffer mode, for an alternate xserver, and to select certain video drivers, which could help once we can identify what the trouble is.

Ok I got fluxbox working last night. Talk about minimalist. But hey I have to do what I have to do. It took me some time to realize that I had to right click in the open area to get the flux equivilent of the windows start menu. Ok now most of the instructions here are made for KDE how do I translate them for using flux box? Most importantly can someone walk me thru how I could get my USB zip drive recognized. I would like to continue to boot off the CD but would like to save any work to a zip disk.

I would highly recommend not using KDE because of your limited memory. Of the choices presented on the CD, fluxbox is probably the least system-bogging, however, given your windows backgroud, IceWM would probably be the most familiar for you. The menu should be quite similar to the one in KDE. Another 'cheat code' that may be useful for you is the 'depth' option; it may improve performance at a lower color depth. (knoppix depth=16 desktop=icewm)

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Originally Posted by Shaba1

Thanks arkaine23.
I looked up some info on flux(fluxbox) on the web and will study.

I will definately be back with more questions. Right now the only thing that makes me hesitant was the amount of time it took(45 minutes) from when I put the cd in until the time the KDE desktop came up.

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It could be because of the speed of the drive, laptops aren't known for they're 52x drives. And because its old you can expect something around 2x-4x, at 2x it takes about 80 minutes to read an entire cd, when booting knoppix reads alot of the cd which could explain the long boot time.