SAFE?

Define safe?

From the CD, saving NOTHING, like configs, persistant home, etc... yes, it is about as safe as anything can be on a PC.

NTFS - no way - don't save anything to your NTFS partition, that is definately not safe.

Hard drive installing Knoppix to your system, no , not safe - I speak from experiance here - Knoppix opens up a whole slew of "nasties" to a beginner - protection, permissions, the "dreaded" (i'm biased on this issue) apt-get, is not for the "faint-of-heart".

I used to work with the "beginner's" in Win98 support, and just having people call because they loaded there complete hard drive onto there desktop, for reasons I have no clue, these kinds of people could barely find the power switch, and were "let loose" by the "guy who installed there system" to just run it "nilly-willy" - not a horrible thought, unless you think that "we" were the ones they called when they "trashed" there system, "we" were the ones who had to deal with "I just turned it on this morning, and it doesn't work, no, it was running fine last night, and no, I didn't do anything" stuff.

In my own words, some people are running with a byte right shifted by one bit

These are the "beginner's" I am speaking of, and with Linux/Debian/Red Hat/SuSE/Mandrake, etc... they have WAY too much power for there own good. It is a dissaster in waiting, IMHO.

I never realized just how much "power" Knoppix gives a user, until I trashed my own system, three times now, and didn't have a clue what I did wrong. I did what I knew I needed to do, and the way your "supposed" to do it, and ended up reinstalling Knoppix, from scratch, three times now. (currently, I am trying to salvage my system to save me from having to do a fourth)

Linux is designed for a "techie", or a "geek", or a person who is "intamately" familiar from the inside out, of there own system - add into this - is VERY familiar with there OS as well. Someone who reads OS manuals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and curls up to a good "Linux" publication for sleeping. That is what Linux is all about.

I have been running Knoppix, hard drive installed, now for more than six months, and I still don't have a clue. I rely heavily on this forum for assistance, and guidance, through the miriad of problems that not only I find, but that find me, and stalk me out.

So, I am sorry to say, if you are looking to "provide" Knoppix to a "beginner", you better be prepared for billions of support calls, either that, or they better be a "permanent" resident in this forum. Yes, even though I am a "six month user/admin" of Knoppix on my own system, I am but a wee newbie still, and a constant poster to this forum on "what next broke" on my own system.

But to answer your question again, Knoppix Live CD is SAFE, until you get the bright idea to "jump feet first into the deep end" of installing and running it - thats when you can get into trouble.

Just my 2 cents worth,
Cuddles