[Glastonbury] FOA Greg KNOPPIX

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Tue, Nov 23, 2004 at 10:24:43PM +0000, Greg Browne wrote:
> Hi Peter
> It's a Compaq 500/128/6.4 but aps are crashing on it - I'm going to
> try SuSE instead of Debian, or as you suggest, maybe KNOPPIX to see if
> it is more stable. To get the recording done, I used SUSE9.1 on a
> desktop, in the end, which was simplicity itself, to get a tape onto
> CD - if this ease of use is a sign of what LINUX can offer, it has got
> to win one day.
> 
Try SuSE - it is good at hardware recognition. It is a good distribution
to start with. Once you want to get your hands dirty / tinker with your
system, you may find YAST and SuSE policies get in the way.  If you want
the largest range of applications in one distribution, it's probably got
to be Debian in the end :)  

KNOPPIX is a fantastic distribution for what it is.  It is a good demo
CD, a good "Live CD / rescue CD", has heaps of apps. - but 128M is
(about) the minimum that it needs to work really well.  Klaus Knopper
has made a distribution for himself, primarily. It's based on Debian
"unstable" with a bit of "testing" thrown in.  My personal experience is
that it is fairly straightforward to install to hard disk - but almost
impossible to upgrade anything thereafter.  The "purist" in me is also
disappointed in that Knoppix contains non-free components.

Kanotix is someone else's take on the same theme: based entirely on
Debian unstable because Knoppix didn't work exactly the way he wanted.

If apps are crashing, use a SuSE disk to run memtest86 for five or six
hours and just check out your memory.

HTH,

Andy