[Glastonbury] post from clare@blackdownhills.fsnet.co.uk requires approval (fwd)

[Martin Wheeler]

On Sun, 2 Jan 2005, tim hall wrote:

> I am developing several points of view about Knoppix, which are probably
> wrong, therefore I'm seeking a better point of view.
>
> 1. Knoppix is only a DEMO. It's a great demo, but you wouldn't want to use it
> to do any actual work.

I think I'd agree with that.


> 2. It's very difficult to install to Hard Drive.

NOT in my experience.  (Quite the contrary.)


> 3. Once installed it's almost impossible to upgrade.

Yup.  That's the *real* killer.  Don't even *try*.  Don't even install to 
hard drive is my opinion.


> 4. It doesn't even use ALSA yet. (as a musician, this one is important)

As a non-musician, I am forced to admit I hadn't even noticed!


> Surely it's much easier to install Debian Sarge?

Absolutely.


In fact, I have just installed Sarge on what used to be my firewall (it 
was running Mandrake) -- on a machine I haven't touched for 
three-and-a-half years, which I inherited from Andy, who himself inherited 
it from a skip several years previous to that.

It's a P100 with a (for its day) *massive* 32M of memory, a 3Gb disk, one 
floppy and pretty much nowt else.  So I had to bootstrap install from (3)
floppies, then get it to download everything else over the 'net.
Which it did without problem.

(Oh -- just one little thing.  This used to be a firewall, right?  So it's 
got network cards coming out of every orifice.  So what does Debian do?
It very helpfully says: 'No network card detected' -- then gives me a list 
of about a hundred to choose one from.  [You CANNOT be serious!  This is 
exactly the sort of thing that gives Linux a really bad name.]
Then I remember it's a Compaq (which incidentally is why it's just worked 
continuously with like no problem ever since it was chucked in a skip on 
6-6-98 according to the little sticker on the side -- I can't have turned 
it off more than a dozen times in the last three-and-a-half years myself 
-- and Compaqs have to tell the kernel where to find anything at all, 'cos 
Compaqs squirrel them away where no-one but Compaq engineers can find 
them, and use weird interrupts to boot.  Fortunately I was able to tell it 
what sort of card(s) it had in it without tearing the box apart, so no 
real harm done.
But had I been a beginner ...

So, yeah -- Sarge is easy to install -- as long as you know what you're 
doing IF you're installing on an old machine (which many newcomers to 
Linux *are* doing).  Few newcomers are willing to give up a brand-new 
state-of-the-art box to an OS they're just about to start experimenting 
with.  Which is a shame, really.
-- 
Martin Wheeler   -   StarTEXT / AVALONIX - Glastonbury - BA6 9PH - England
mwheeler at startext.co.uk                http://www.startext.co.uk/mwheeler/
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