KNOPPIX Mini-review

What is Knoppix
For those interested, I have played around with Knoppix for the past few days. I have always heard about it and finally decided to download it and give it a try. It is a complete Linux distribution based upon Debian Gnu/Linux. It boots from a single CD and does not disrupt your existing system whatsoever. It boots into the KDE environment and does not require a logon. You are automatically logged on as a user called "knoppix".

Getting Knoppix
Okay, this is the most painful part. This is a 700MB+ file, that took me about 4 hours to download through a 1/2 T1 line. If your only access to the internet is through dialup, you will probably want to consider ordering a CD. Anyway, follow the necessary links at the Knoppix site to either buy or download the CD. The download file is a single .iso that you can burn onto a CD.

Trial 1: Laptop
Laptops have always been somewhat specialized and therefore not greatly supported under Linux. I decided to give this a try on my Dell Inspiron 8500.
Specifications

• P4 - 2.2 Ghz
• 1 Gbyte of memory
• External USB Zip 750 drive
• External USB floppy drive
• Intel AC'97 codec sound chip
• Logitech USB scroll mouse
• Nvidia 4200 go video card & 1920x1200 display
• Intel AC'97 modem (cheap winmodem)
• Dell TrueMobile Wireless network card

Knoppix sucesfully booted and identified most of the components. It nailed the video card, but couldn't figure out the display. I ended up getting a 1024x768 display in the middle of my screen with a big black band around it. The soundcard was recognized and configured perfectly. The mouse was identified and it had full scrolling capabilities. The wireless network card was identified and worked perfectly. I was instantly connected. It even works with hotplug. The modem was not recognized ever. The zip drive is recognized, but does not get mounted automagically unless it is plugged in at boot time. It does do hot plug, but you have to issue a:
I never did get the floppy drive to work at all.
Performance

• Boot time: 2:00 min.
• Openoffice start: 50 seconds.

Trial 2: Midrange desktop
This is a pretty normal desktop setup. There is nothing to strange or fancy about it.
Specifications

• P4 1.8 Ghz
• 256MB memory
• nVidia Geforce4 MX 420
• Intel AC'97 Codec sound
• Broadcom BCM4401 network card
• Linksys wireless network card
• Generic 250MB IDE internal zip drive
• Unknown cheap winmodem

Once again, knoppix successfully booted. This time, the graphic recognition and display were ideal. I got a full KDE screen that was crisp and clear. The sound again was found and set perfectly. A ps/2 scroll mouse was found and operated perfectly. The zip drive was found, but not mounted, which was a bit of disappointment. By issuing the mount command above though it worked. The modem again was not found. The biggest dissappointment was that it did not find the wireless card.
Performance

• Bootup time: 45 seconds
• Openoffice start: 1:35 Minutes

Trial 3: Obligatory P.O.S. machine
Everybody has one of these ancient dinasours lying around. I had one that happened to have a bootable rom drive in it so I gave it a go.
Specifications

• Pentium MMX 166Ghz
• Soundblaster 16 soundcard
• 64 Mbytes Ram
• Hayes compatible ISA modem
• Diamond MM Firegl 1000 pro video card

Well, knoppix loaded on this thing as well. The performance was not stellar though (see below). It did successfully and briliantly configure the video, sound and old serial mouse though. The modem was not linked to the proper device. Once I set this to use the proper device it worked.
Performance

• Bootup Time: 5:50 minutes
• Openoffice: Dismall, I lost track after 10 minutes!

For comparison purposes, I have Slackware installed on this P.O.S. machine. With Slackware/KDE I got:

• Bootup Time: 2:40 minutes
• Openoffice: 3:00 minutes

And on the same machine with Slackware/xFCe I got:

• Bootup Time: 1:40 minutes
• Openoffice: 2:15 minutes

Positives

• video card and sound card recognition was brilliant
• Boots up as a user and not root
• Makes your existing hard drives read only, but allows this to be changed if desired.
• Does not interfere with existing OS setup at all.
• Loads with a lot of extras for it all being on a CD.
• Allows the creation of a writeable home directory for continued usage as well as usage on other machines. With the Knoppix CD, a zip disk and access to any machine, you can run this anywhere.

Negatives

• Poor performance. It has to pull applications off of a cd drive which is a huge performance hit.
• Modem finding was dismal in all three machines. I only got one to work and that was after linking it myself.
• Zip drive recognition could be better. That it did not mount the IDE zip drive on bootup is shocking.
• Overall the network card recognition was okay, but it did not recognize the Linksys wireless card. This is a fairly well known device.
• xine is loaded for DVD playback, but for legal reasons, the libdvdcss is not included. No commercial dvds can be played without installing this.
• Hotplug works great on some components but not so great on others.

Tips

• Under the Knoppix button on the control panel, there is a button to make a permanent home directory on a removeable (or non-removeable) medium.
• By right clicking on the drives, you can specify the option to write to a drive. I would warn you about this, but Knoppix does a fine job with its warnings.
• If you do create a permenant home drive, you can tell Knoppix to use it at the boot prompt, by typing knoppix home=scan to have knoppix search for the location or knoppix home=/dev/sda4 to specify the location (for a zip drive).
• Under the knoppix button on the control bar, there is a button to pull up a super user shell. This is handy for quickly mounting drives, etc.

Impressions
This is really a cool thing for several reasons. If you want to see if Linux will install on your system, this is a great way to see what will be easy to hook up and what is going to take some investigation. If you would like to run linux from time to time but don't want to do a full install, then this is perfect. If you have a spare zip disk, you can keep your configurations and data handy. Finally, for a recovery disk, this should work great. Most of my recovery disks in the past have been on a floppy and boot a extremely minimalistic linux with hardly any necessary tools. This gives you a full gui with all of the tools+ you could ever need.