Hello Fellow Knoppix Users,

I'm a relative Knoppix newbie here with some thoughts I'd like to share. I was thinking last night how far I've come with Knoppix Linux in a pretty short time and how my HD installation is just what I want, although it is a different package than what came on the CD.

Knoppix 3.7 on my desktop was at first a way to avoind Windoze online vulnerabilites. I was happy with just that. I didn't venture too much beyond net surfing and email with it. I thought installing Thunderbird to both Windoze and Knoppix and then configuring TBird to share the Windoze inboxes was just the cats meow.

But as I continued to explore its features I found that I could rip and burn CDs just as well in Knoppix as in Windoze XP with K3B. And they play great with Kaffeine media player.

I didn't like Open Office that much (TOO SLOW!!!) so I removed it and installed Abiword plus a lot of supporting packages. It is very fast and more capable in Open Office. It reads all my WordPerfect files!!! Amazing.

At this point about the only thing I can't do in Knoppix that I can do in XP is when I need the very advanced photo editing features of Photoshop 7. But for the vast majority of my photo editing needs are happily met with Xnview and Gimp, which is pretty powerful. I will have to investigate wine for that.

And secure? I wanted a secure OS. With Arno's firewall script running, my installation is more secure than Fort Knox. I'm totally stealthed!!!

So, I say the dream is here. Certainly for me at least. Maybe not for Mom and Pop users, but available for the taking for anyone who has been using computers for a while and has even a modicum of tech ability.

Think of it: An OS that is bootable on a live CD, that installs to the HD. That same Knoppix CD morphing into a rescue/system maintenance disk. If Bill Gates ever produced a product like that he'd have a fresh round of billions coming in.

Mr. Gates would have us believe switching to Linux is a nightmare. Sure there is a learning curve, and a few bumps in the road to be experienced. But the real nightmare is the constant battle with M$ security problems. Endless rounds of updates, patches, and still no end of online vulnerablities in sight. Windoze XP at this point has to be the least secure OS M$ ever made, due in part to the predominance of M$ monoculture!!!! THAT is the nightmare. So, I've unplugged from M$.

And I free of that cyber vermon infested M$ monoculture. Free at last. Free at last. God Almighty! I'm free at last.

OK, off my soapbox.

Saki