I received Linux-Magazin 04/21 DVD edition today and have done a flash usb install from the DVD. I ran into a few annoying and time-consuming problems, which are not completely solved yet.

1. the DVD boots with German menus. Happily I'm able to muddle through the menus (which are not in the same order an English), but wanted the installed version to use English. This turned out to take a bit of doing, because of course V.9.2 also sets the keyboard up in German, and it took a lot of trial and error to find the equal (=) sign to enter the parameter lang=us at boot up.

I set the Windows Keyboard setting to Deutsch, and then tried all the keys in a text document until I found the "=". On my keyboard (a French Apple keyboard - lots of fun!).

To enter "=" I have to HOLD DOWN the left UPPER CASE key while depressing the "0" key in the row above QUERTY.

2. this lets me boot with English menus, but it wasn't translated to the flash installation, except that I get an English keyboard for startup. So every time I boot I have to enter "knoppix64 lang=us screen=xxx etc.

3. 9.2, like earlier versions, doesn't size my external monitor automatically, leaving out the margins so it's unnavigable - I can't see or access any taskbars, or apps unless I resize the screen at bootup - and then both the primary and secondary displays are using only 3/4 of their real estate.

Unfortunately, I tried to fix this problem using the display adjustment app. And that cost me dozens of reboots and several really scary hours during which Windows failed to boot while the ASUS firmware kept tempting me to restore or reset Windows after all but one of it's PC repair modules failed to identify or fix the problem - a first in my several years of running this laptop.

I finally agreed to let it "repair" the "Widows startup files", and that took two tries before Windows finally returned to life. I'm still only guessing at the cause, because neither Windows or Asus offered any information on this 'fix', and my two displays are now out of step in Windows too, only the other way around.

The good news is that Synaptic is working in this version.

The bad (so far), is that the System Tools/HardInfo system profiler and benchmark which I used extensively to test two laptop batteries (on a different laptop) under Knoppix 8.6.1 over the last few days has been dumbed down (at least in the battery module) so that it now doesn't give anything but the percentage of charge left, just as the desktop battery icon does.

The 8.6.1 version shows the nominal rating of the battery, and the charge in mAhours remaining, showing that a battery I recently received from Amazon doesn't have the capacity advertised on its case or on its shipping box. The newer app simply shows the percentage of usable battery capacity without any indication what that capacity is. According to the 9.2 version, both the failing 7 year old battery and the brand new one charge "fully" to "normal' capacity, suggesting they have equal capacity. Whereas the 8.6.1 shows that one charges to a capacity of 4350/5000 mAh, while the other charges to 3450/4000mAh. Good to know!

The other problem I encountered is with the Clamav antivirus program. It appears to go online to 'update' the virus signature file, but nothing downloads and the app remains unusable.

I did manage to download the latest minirt properly (after first downloading a 65MB version here using Opera) and am looking forward to learning how to install and use it, if I can find some documentation.mAh