Booting Knoppix 5.0 on a non-DVD machine?

[Harry Kuhman]

Smart Boot Manager can be run from a floppy disk without ever installing it to the MBR (from a floppy is the way that I would recomend using it if you wanted to find out if you liked it). Still, I've had no problems installing it to an MBR or removing it, although I like XOSL much better. I didn't mention XOSL in this case because XOSL must be installed; it can not run from a floppy.

[PaulBx1]

Maybe it's the hardware, but we have seen many cases of such problems with high speed burns and with bad media, they tend to work on some systems but not others.

Good point, I will see about this when I get the 5.0.1 CD and DVD.

If you are using "recent" computers which (the bios) can boot off a usb device (hdd or large pen drive)
you can install knoppix, the bootloader and your data on the same usb device and boot from it !
FYI, PQI has a very small and flat usb pen drive "intelligent stick" $25 at newegg...

Yes Gilles, that is a "stretch" goal of mine. Thanks for the tip about PQI...

<later>
Gilles, I noticed that PQI thing is a small flat card that first plugs into a plastic USB-form factor holder. Is the holder required to use it? Or can you just plug the bare card into a USB port? If the holder is required, that would negate much of the advantage of the small card size...

<later yet>
Wow, it doesn't need the holder. Gotta have one!

If you are a windows user and are not very experienced with boot loaders I would be very careful !
I just don't like touching the master boot record (mbr) and/or the disk/partition boot sector
of a working windows system which is not mine, or I just cannot take the risk to break ...

Precisely my concern.

Smart Boot Manager can be run from a floppy disk without ever installing it to the MBR...

Which makes it worth looking at, and I will do so. However remember my "usage model". When travelling, boot loaders are irrelevant because I will simply boot from CD on another's machine. In house, I want more convenience, yet still would rather avoid trampling the MBR, so IPUG's solution looks good to me. Also, I like the old-fashioned way of diddling with small scripts like config.sys, makes the system more understandable and able to tinker with (something that irritated me about the way 98, XP, etc tried to hide system details from users - I'm a tinkerer).

But Smart Boot Manager on floppy will be my next step if this minimalist grub flops for some reason.