Knoppix vs Debian

**Damon** · 03-25-2003, 02:57 AM

I've done a HDD installation of Knoppix for a few days already, and apart from a few minor issues (lock screen doesn't ask for password, occasional system pauses for a few seconds), it has been working great. A big THANKS.

I plan to use this installation as my primary OS. However, going thru the forum, some suggested that Knoppix was not really designed for HDD installation, and there are issues related to HDD install such as hard-coded home directory for new user creation, etc.

I think there must be people using HDD installed Knoppix as their primary OS for some time. Can someone share their experience on this? I tried Debian R2.2 some time ago and the installation process was daunting. Knoppix has been a lot more pleasing.

Cheers!

**rickenbacherus** · 03-25-2003, 03:31 AM

Knoppix 3.1 is my primary OS. I agree - installing Debian is a pain in the !@#. I really don't know if there are any major differences except for one which can be fixed. It is that you cannot partition and install (from the knoppix cd) to seperate partitions as would be most desireable in that it is this multiple partition scheme that makes Linux much less susceptible to viruses. That is to say it is preferrable to make seperate partitions for /var, /home, /tmp etc. I plan on doing this but I haven't yet. I've got everything working flawlessly and don't want to screw up anything. It shouldn't be too hard, make the partitions, format them then copy the directories over, make sure that everything is pointed to where it needs to go and THEN delete the original directories. Of course I have a backup of my entire install ready to go. Maybe somebody else would know what differences there are. Perhaps a Debian purist would say that Knoppix is 'less' Debian but for me it doesn't matter. Knoppix rocks!

**RockMumbles** · 03-25-2003, 05:09 AM

Damon,

If you want a debian OS designed for hd install you might want to look into Libranet, I ran libranet 1.9 for about a year and then went to 2.0 in the last year. I've upgraded my Libranet 2.0 (woody) to kde3.1.1, X-4.2.1, mozilla 1.2.1 etc. some stuff is not as current as 03-23 knoppix but still pretty current and very stable.

Libranet has an easy, very good text based install, with good hardware detection and very good system configuration. I have one system that has a knoppix hd install, but the knoppix install is my 2nd of three OS's on that computer, I'll probably reinstall over it tomorrow with the new 3.2-3-23 release as the two alternate distro's are just for playing/testing purposes on that box.

rock

**Fabianx** · 03-28-2003, 09:56 PM

Originally Posted by Damon

I've done a HDD installation of Knoppix for a few days already, and apart from a few minor issues (lock screen doesn't ask for password, occasional system pauses for a few seconds), it has been working great. A big THANKS.

I plan to use this installation as my primary OS. However, going thru the forum, some suggested that Knoppix was not really designed for HDD installation, and there are issues related to HDD install such as hard-coded home directory for new user creation, etc.

I think there must be people using HDD installed Knoppix as their primary OS for some time. Can someone share their experience on this? I tried Debian R2.2 some time ago and the installation process was daunting. Knoppix has been a lot more pleasing.

Cheers!

We use Knoppix as debian system in school, I use it at home, some friends of mine use it ...

No one ever had problems (except with wrong kde-sources, but there is kde to blame and that could have ben happend with real debian too)

Oh, the bug with the lock should be fixed ...

At least it was on our installation of the january release (2003-01-23 I believe)

I had this idea in the first place, but it is only useful in cd-rom mode, because there user knoppix has no password ...

cu

Fabian