In need of some help

[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?
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?

[Harry Kuhman]

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?....

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.

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?

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

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?

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.

[samhainbaphomet]

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.

[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.

[Harry Kuhman]

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.

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.

[rrfish72]

Don't believe me then.

[samhainbaphomet]

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.

[NewGuy]

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...

Don't believe me then.

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.

I don't know why. Hope my provider will not recognize me by this post and will not cut my real speed.
(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.

[aquaxpillx108]

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

[NewGuy]

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.