[Sussex] Knoppix 3.9 / pen drive test - volunteers wanted

[Frances Fleming]

Knoppix 3.9 hangs or errors when saving to my pen drive - so I'm
calling for volunteers to test drive it.

As most of you will know, I help man our stand at the BCF Worthing,
where we promote and sell the live Knoppix disk. I take my laptop
along and give demonstrations of some of the applications, including
saving to and opening from the pen drive.

So the workings of any new Knoppix are of interest to me.
If any of you can get hold of the Knoppix 3.9 live disk, could I
please ask you to do a test drive for me? The five tests are listed
at the foot of this posting.
The tests are specifically related to use of a USB pen drive.

I have been using the live Knoppix disks for OpenOffice trials of
Writer, Calc and Impress, and for Gimp.
My laptop is a Dell Latitude C640 with 256MB RAM.
My friend's laptop is a Toshiba Tecra, unsure what RAM.
One of my PCs is a Packard Bell with 256MB RAM.
The pen drive is a Kingston DataTraveler USB 2.0.
All above machines recognise the pen drive automatically and
display its icon on the desktop.
I then go into its properties, change it to be writable and remount.
The pen drive holds several files created on my various Linux
machines and some Windows files.

With the Knoppix 3.8 I had no problems saving GIMP or OOo 1.4 files
to my Kingston pen drive and reopening files located on the same
pen drive either via the pen drive icon or via the application's
File > Open menu.

The Knoppix 3.9 disk features OOo 2.0 (or I think really 1.9??) and
the GIMP 2.2.7. Both suites work really well at the create stage..

But with 3.9 on either laptop it hangs on any of the following
operations:
Test 3:
- From File > Save, browse to the pen drive and save the file.
  - obviously requires browsing to the pen drive mount point:
    just trying to open /mnt mostly locks dialog up completely
    requiring Knoppix restart. At least this can be done via
    the GUI log out button.
    So wasn't able to save a GIMP or OOo file for first time.
Test 4:
- From File > Open, browse to the pen drive and repoen the file.
  - In my case this has to be a file saved by the earlier 3.8 disk.
    Same problem with browsing via dialog, so no success.
Test 5:
- Repoen the file via the pen drive icon on the desktop.
  - Again I only had files saved by the earlier 3.8 disk.
    Has never succeeded. Yes, it launches OpenOffice. Yes, the
    file progress bar displays. But ends with blank, grey screen.
    Which will not close via any of the GUI methods. Requires GUI
    machine restart, otherwise won't launch any other OOo app.
However, if by much patience and restarting the disk, I manage
to save a file (I did it in GIMP), it will reopen it fine (but only from
the pen
drive icon on the desktop, not through the application's
File > Open menu).

There is a slight difference in performance on my desktop:
Test 3:
- From File > Save, browse to the pen drive and save the file.
  - browsing to the pen drive mount point was no problem.
    Trying to save a Writer file resulted in this message:
    Error saving the document Untitled1:
    /mnt/uba1/fay_test_writer.odt does not exist.
    Clicking OK resulted in a second message:
    Error saving the document Untitled1:
    General Error.
    General input/output error.
Test 6:
- Repeat using a floppy if you have one.
  - my desktop has a floppy drive, and I couldn't even save
    to that. I couln't even save a plain editor file.

This is obviously a big issue, not only because I demonstrate
the disk at the Worthing BCF but because we also sell them.
Last Sunday, I switched back from the troublesome new 3.9 disk
to the tried and trusted 3.8 disk. After the fair I tried a
different disk with the same result.

I naturally want all our customers to have the best possible
experience with the live Knoppix disk, whether they use a
desktop or laptop, or do or don't use a pen drive.

So could I please ask for volunteers to test drive the 3.9
version (or 4 if we're going to start selling that)?
It doesn't matter what sort of laptop or desktop you have,
but please specify both the machine and the pen drive.

Please test with both GIMP and OpenOffice.
The tests are:
1. Mount your USB pen drive write enabled.
2. Open GIMP or OpenOffice application and create a file.
3. From File > Save, browse to the pen drive and save the file.
4. From File > Open, browse to the pen drive and repoen the file.
5. Repoen the file via the pen drive icon on the desktop.
6. Repeat using a floppy if you have one.

Thanks in advance.
P.S. Please remember that this test is on behalf of users
who may never have heard of the CLI :)

P.P.S. If 3.9 won't save easily to any pen drive or floppy,
we will know to warn our customers, or better, give them a
choice between the earlier 3.8 and the newer 3.9.