Confusing Boot Problem

[mikedacapo]

I'm using Overclockix live cd and it's working fine,
the knoppix live cd from the downlod section here and it's working fine too;
Now i wanted to use Morphix but it kept on rebooting,
Then feather linux but this one had a fatal error.
Finally i tried damn small linux but i had a black screen all the time.

i have no knowledge whatsoever of linux but i did some googling and tried xmodule=nvidia, vga=normal, and xsteup.sh...
i'm trying these stunts from a dell computer (fx5200, 512mb, 3ghz).

why am i looking for a smaller distro you ask? because i have a 512mb flash drive that work perfectly with overclockix and knoppix from the download section of this website.

thank you for you answer,
mike

[poppe]

The most probable reason for your boot problem is a matter of what is included with the distro you're booting. To explain further, both Overclockix and Knoppix file sizes are darn close to 700MB. This means that these distros have more packed into them, great window managers, applications such as Open office, AND modules to run certain devices. You can think of these modules much in the same way as device drivers in Windows (if you're familiar with Windows). These modules are necessary to run your hardware on your machine, e.g. USB ports, CD-ROM, video cards (NVIDIA), modems, etc. Now, a smaller distro such as Damn Small Linux, which is around 50MB in size... These smaller distros will not have as many modules to run various hardware as a larger distro such as Knoppix will. The developers of DSL, Feather Linux, etc don't want to strip away applications which most typical users want in their operating system (Open office, Gimp, Firefox). So this only leaves the developer with the option of stripping away, quite often, the modules. My recommendation to you is boot your machine with Knoppix a few times so you can notate what modules it uses (displayed in text when Knoppix is booting), and then just research any small distributions you are interested in... Quick tip - to save you some time, try putting in a request tothe developer to include the modules in a special distribution for you. The developer may request a small fee, but you will save time and have a smaller distridution that works. Oh, and one more tip, try using SLAX. It is based on Slackware linux and is around 200MB in size, and it seems to work pretty well on just about any machine... Be sure to look at their webpages for cheats and basic usage, Slax is a little more involved when booting. Good luck!