I have to admit, it seems like a cool idea. Especially to just do some quick stuff in Linux without even touching your hard drive.

But I can't see it being practical. Actually ... I'm a lil confused. It's a bootable cd? So *does* it touch your hard drive? I can't see running an operating system entirely off a CD.

It does not touch your hard drive in any way. If it does detect drives, it mounts them, but thats it. No data goes to your drive at all. God bless RAM Disks. I've used it a few times, and I have to admit its great. Espically in a certain school that has certain horrible extreme restrictions on computers. Just plop the cd in, restart, and there ya have it, a totally unrestricted UNIX machine (that can also circumvent the security in windows after a small little change).

knoppix is cool, not to mention its hdinstall script probably is the easiest way to get a debian system running.

sounds VERY interesting... thanx!

I'm cross-posting this, as it's germane to this thread as well...

Knoppix is a CD-bootable Linux distribution, so no installation is required. It includes Internet, graphics (The GIMP), office software (OpenOffice.org), games, and more. If you can access the BIOS to set it to boot from the CD, you're all set; if not, you can create a boot floppy and go from there. Although the hard drive icons appear on the desktop, the drives are not mounted until you either left-click on the icon or right-click and select Mount. Similarly, write-access is turned off by default, but can be turned on.

Knoppix is excellent for checking out Linux, but it can also be used as a rescue disk for Windows, as it has drive-imaging and partition-editing utilities. It's quite useful. I'm using it right now to post this message. The CD makes a good install-disc, as well.

It's free. The download links are available on the main site http://www.Knoppix.com and the unofficial support site is at http://www.Knoppix.net, which I frequent as Loper.

I've tried Knoppix and really like it -- haven't had any trouble with it except for rel 3.3 where my mouse wouldn't work, but it does in 3.2. Go figure.

So I was a bit adventurous when I found Gnoppix, which is a variation of Knoppix (uses Gnome). I downloaded the latest release, burned to a CD and ran it. No problems (my mouse worked) and I liked it until I came to the logout. I expected it to run through the shutdown script, but my screen became a jumble of horizontal lines and wasn't responding so I reset. Then my machine essentially became a 20 pound paperweight.

I only get the purple screen of non-compliance, nothing else. It seems like it's booting up, at least it sounds that way, but when I tried using a boot disk to try to work on it, it by passes the floppy drive (no LED light-up) although it does run through the CD drives. Could my bios be trashed? Also, would my problem also be complicated by a blown video card (nvidia tnt2) or a bad monitor? The system is a 750 MHz Athlon with windows 98 SE. If it is the bios, could I reset it?

I've used several live cd's in the past an never had any trouble like this at all. Any info, guidance, suggestion would be appreciated.

Mick

Knoppix is a great idea and works well. Slax-Live CD is another good one that I use at work and school. You do have to remember that these live distros will run slower on you machine than a hardrive install will. Check out this site for more:
http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=cd

One other note, make sure you burn it as an iso image so it will be bootable.

Don't forget about gnoppix, which is basically Knoppix with a Gnome wm, as opposed to KDE.

http://www.gnoppix.org

There's also LindowsCD, which is the same thing as Knoppix & Gnoppix - a Linux distro that runs from the CD (Live CD), in this case, Lindows.

http://www.lindows.com

ive NEVER used linux and im now downloading knoppix (wow thats a big file) got an hour and a half to go is there anything i need to know before i burn and use the disc??

all info will be welcomed
thanks