TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

Knoppix found its way to me via DistroWatch, as was the case with most if not all the distros i review. It has held a heralded spot in my backpack for several years as a "look what I can do with the school lab computers" kind of thing. It's fun to see a lab tech's eyes bug out when he sees you running Linux on a big black Dell that is supposed to run Windoze XP like all the other drones in the lab.

Install:

Well, as I mentioned above, this cute little distro doesn't require you to install anything to your hard drive at all. All you have to do is pop it in your CDROM drive and (assuming your computer can boot from a CD) let knoppix do the rest. It autodetects your video card, mouse, keyboard, etc and has you up and running with a fully functional (and quite full featured) KDE desktop distro in about 5 minutes, max. You can also save your configuration to a disk for faster boots.

Package Selection:

None. Knoppix doesn't let you install or uninstall packages, but WHO CARES!?! You're not using one iota of hard drive space anyway, so what does it matter if you can't uninstall stuff? The programs it comes with (and I can't stress just how many) are very useful and it even has a more-addictive-than-heroin Puzzle Bobble clone called Frozen Bubble that will give you hours of mind-numbing gameplay. I keep a copy of this distribution in my backpack and run it on the computer lab's computers instead of Windoze sometimes. (SWT students: it works, trust me. Ask me personally for details)

Most Annoying Feature:

No easy install to hard drive. I really like the distro in general, but it's made simply to be a CD-based OS, not to be installed onto a hard drive (though the newer version 3.2 does allow you to store configuration files on your local machine).

Who's it best for?

This distro has a wide target audience. For someone who's never worked with Linux before, it's a safe and easy way to try out a working Linux distribution without having to make any commitment whatsoever to your hard drive, or even set up a dual boot machine. For the linux guru on-the-go, it's a neat way to carry your Anti-Gates propoganda around with you and you'll no longer be forced to use Windoze ever again!