[Sussex] Hello from an new list member - a bit about me

[John D.]

On Monday 13 Oct 2003 4:28 pm, Tony Austin wrote:
> > I too had a massive uphill struggle with Linux(Suse,Redhat) for the last
> > 2/3
> > years but my eyes have just been opened by Knoppix.
> >
> > You seem to have found success in Gentoo. Could you tell me how it
> > compares
> > to Knoppix?
> > Is it even easier ? If so I'm happy to defect again !
>
> If Knoppix is a boot and run from the CD distro, as people are saying,
> then Gentoo may not be your best choice for simplicity at the moment.
> Gentoo is really good at a number of things, but you do have to get your
> head under the bonnet to see how it all works - which is actually one of
> the best things about it.
>
> Regards.

Well, 

while I was meddling with debian (post Steve D's visit to my humble 
establishment), I found a few things that I either couldn't do, or I hadn't 
selected the correct preferences, so I booted the copy of Knoppix 3.1 that 
David C. gave me some months ago.

To my delight, it detected and recognised all my hardware, and apart from a 
little config stuff for my network card, it was an absolute "doddle". so I 
promptly downloaded knoppix 3.3, checked it out and installed it to my hard 
disc. 

It then becomes, basically, a testing/unstable debian system. After checking 
out the knoppix forums, there is probably some stuff that it can't do, or 
need's further configuration, but as my levels of IT knowledge are that of "a 
windows drone with big idea's", I have yet to find anything that I can't do.

Oh, yes it have, I just remembered. After doing a hard disc install of 
knoppix, I installed OOo 1.1 (after being reminded about it's release by a 
post from Geoff), and it just installs alongside the OOo1.0 that came with 
knoppix 3.3 - it's a bit of a game getting knoppix to uninstall some of the 
"included" stuff, though a bit more research/meddling with 
/etc/apt/sources.list and working out dpkg should do it.

I would say that doing a hard disc install of knoppix is as close as you can 
get to doing a "mandrake style" install of a debian based system (but I'm 
still not going to bin my mandrake, as some of the "eye candy" available from 
the likes of "texstar" and "the plf" are excellent - some rather nice 
bouncing icons during the bootsplash phase of login :) )

regards

John D.