Goodbye Knoppix - Hello Mandrake

[Drago]

See, I think it was a defect in the material. Of course I don't know anything about the mechanics/physics of CDs/CD-RW 52x/24x/52x drives. I think maybe I can find something in Nero that could discount the possibility of positioning outside of specs, but I have never got a reported error on this drive, at least until the crack appeared - then I got plenty of read errors.

[Brute-Squad]

I /do/ have a 52x 48x 52x cd burner. I think if anyone knows of a Windows (oops!) utility to set the read speed of a cd-rom lower than max, that would be the best solution for me. I can do it in Nero, but I don't think I can do it in Windows.

Try the tool "CD-Bremse". You can DL it here: http://www.cd-bremse.de/
If you don´t speak german or need some help about it, just send a PM.

[Drago]

Well, I got the Mandrake 9.2 "Discovery" 3-disk distro today and installed it. I haven't really looked at it yet.

The install is not completely easy, but it has all of the functionality that you need, like hd partition, modem/network setup, and its own bootmanager, that actualy works. You /do/ have to know what you're doing, especially in the hard disk install/partition part, to successfully navigate the wizard's choices.

Without having looked at it (but having installed 11 graphical interfaces - ask me why?) I may not need to run KNOPPIX, unfortunately. Despite the hd install/partition/bootmanager problems I had, I have become attached to it.

[j.drake]

If you're like me, you will continue to be attached to it. There will always be times when Knoppix will be more convenient or more appropriate to a particular task than something you have on your hard drive.

Besides, this forum is much more interesting and educational than the ones for other distros. For example, when I was looking at the possibility of installing SuSE 9.0, I went to their forum, and it was really lame. The moderators got all heavy-handed and anal about stupid stuff, but really didn't offer nearly as much substance as you get here. IMHO, irrespective of which distro you settle on for installation, you will learn more about using linux here. Oh, and FWIW, once I really looked at it, I really wasn't all that impressed with SuSE 9.0 - as far as I can tell, it's a whole lot of hype over packages that Knoppix users already take for granted. For example, they were all proud of their increased capabilities with NTFS partitions, which is what I wanted, but once I really looked into it, you still couldn't write reliably to NTFS, and their big point was the ability to read from and resize NTFS partitions. Well, woo-hoo!

[Dave_Bechtel]

(Offtopic) I switched from MDK to using SuSE 6.4 and upgraded to 7.3 DVD until I switched to Knoppix. Suse's big draw is the sheer amount of software that arrives on the cd's - it was 7 650MB CD's and 1 DVD for 7.3. According to what I've read about telephone charges in Europe, it's no wonder they're the leaders over there.

--The only problems are:
o It's all RPM
o The errata/fixes/security packages for 7.3 got to be over **1GB** and they never released 7.4 or an update-on-cd.

--Seriously, suse's text based installer is the best I've ever seen - they even let you save where you are in the install (package selection) which was a big selling point for me.

--The reasons I converted to Knoppix:
o SuSE 7.3 can't handle any files over 2Gig.
o Everything after that went to GUI for install - not an option for older machines, or even an option that I like. Personally, the text-based install gave me the most control.

--Things are up in the air now with Novell acquiring them, anyway. Let's hope they don't screw it up. (I used their 8.2 Live-cd to make make my XF86Config file, and now Vmware works under all resolutions.)

If you're like me, you will continue to be attached to it. There will always be times when Knoppix will be more convenient or more appropriate to a particular task than something you have on your hard drive.

Besides, this forum is much more interesting and educational than the ones for other distros. For example, when I was looking at the possibility of installing SuSE 9.0, I went to their forum, and it was really lame. The moderators got all heavy-handed and anal about stupid stuff, but really didn't offer nearly as much substance as you get here. IMHO, irrespective of which distro you settle on for installation, you will learn more about using linux here. Oh, and FWIW, once I really looked at it, I really wasn't all that impressed with SuSE 9.0 - as far as I can tell, it's a whole lot of hype over packages that Knoppix users already take for granted. For example, they were all proud of their increased capabilities with NTFS partitions, which is what I wanted, but once I really looked into it, you still couldn't write reliably to NTFS, and their big point was the ability to read from and resize NTFS partitions. Well, woo-hoo!

[j.drake]

--Things are up in the air now with Novell acquiring them, anyway. Let's hope they don't screw it up.

Aww, c'mon Dave, they acquired WordPerfect, after all, and didn't screw . . .

well, on second thought, never mind.

[andrei]

My KNOPPIX disk cracked in my drive (I think that's where it cracked. A 1/2" crack starting from the middle outward. The CD felt warm, too - I wonder what's going on with that?

Anyway, I figured that since I have to replace the disk and I heard that the Mandrake installation was really easy (I'm a real newbie) I might as well order Mandrake. Then I thought of ordering Debian, and I wonder in fact whether Mandrake is Debian-based - I hope so. Debian has so many disks, and I only have 5.5 Gigs from my 20 Gig hard drive for LINUX.

I don't know whether this forum could support Mandrake questions, but thanks for your help getting started anyway.

Steve

I am a long time Mandrake user and, frankly, I think it's the best distro out there. HOWEVER, if you switch to Mdk you willl not be able to use Knoppix -type binaries as Mdk is uses RPM whereas Knoppix uses the Debian format *.deb. (Red Hat and Suse also use RPMs). RPMs are not nearly as bas as some say, and in fact Mdk as something called urpmi which is really as good as apt-get (the Debian install/update command). Anyway - I doubt very much that it is was Knoppix which crashed your drive. Get good quality CDs and stay a while longer with Knoppix and read about Mdk versus Debian (in my opinion the two best choices out there) and take your decision to pick either only after playing around with both. Also - I would check the Debian and Mdk websites, dicussion groups, utilities, etc. You really want to get a good feel for what makes them different and their strengths and drawbacks. Or if you have two machines - install both (in the Debian case - install Knoppix: the Debian install is not something you are likely to enjoy very much).

Anyway HTH and good luck!

[jims]

Getting started with Linux has been hard. I was trying to put Linux on an older machine and suffering. I had be poor copy of Knoppix 3.2 that would run some features. Knoppix 3.3 wouldn't run at all. Gnoppix 0.5.4 same as Knoppix 3.2. Mepis hung up. I really wanted a Debian install, but I needed to start somewhere. I did the text install for Mandrake and it installed great. No chance yet to test the modem, everything else seems to work great.

But I still want Debian, and when I finally have figured out a little more, I will probably do a Knoppix or Mepis install on new E-machine. It accepted all of Knoppix, Gnoppix, Mepis, but have not installed to it yet. Need to know how to configure the network- but Knoppix or Mepis is where I will go.