Hello All, I tried the knoppix CD and was both disappointed and on the other hand satisfied.
I was disappointed that kalzium was not on the knoppix CD, so that my friend could not try out kalzium if I gave him Knoppix. However, there were a number of other features which might be available. I would have to find out how much RAM is available on his system to see how well it could handle graphic programs like open office and a few others. I tried out open office 1.1.1 . I only have open office 1.1 on my system now. I found out that open office 1.1.1 was not as improved over open office 1.1 as I had hoped. So I will wait for a later version of open office to become available before I download it and install it on my debian linux system. The beauty of exploring open office 1.1.1. on the knoppix disk was that I did not break my open office 1.1 to try out open office 1.1.1. All I had to do to was exit knoppix, remove the knoppix CD and reset the bios to the original settings. I am also satisfied that if my friend's system has enough RAM he can try out linux by changing the bios setting to boot from CD, insert the knoppix CD, and try it out. There were a number of games and programs that he could try out. Since he does not have an internet service provider he could not try out the internet, but he could try out open office, Kstars and a few other neat applications. He could try out Konqueror to navigate his hard drives. If he does not have enough RAM to try out the graphics packages, he could at least try out the text applications. I could teach him the vim editor, as that is on the knoppix CD. I could also demonstrate that while in linux he could view his jpg images with thumbnail sketches of jpg files using konqueror. A friend of mine had to purchase a program to view jpg files with thumbnail images to decide what to open. I did not pay for any programs to view jpg files with thumbnail sketches of the files and mid sized pictures that appeared just before I clicked on them to view full sized. And I could use gqview to view them in a number of different ways. I do not know whether the knoppix disk has gqview on it. I could go over to his house and write down the original bios settings for booting, change them so that he could boot from CD, and give him some experience fooling around with linux. If he gets tired of Linux, I could just have him do what I have done and reset the bios to the original boot media. If he does not feel confident about changing his original bios settings, we could do some activity like learning vim editor only when I come over to his place to change the bios settings for him, and change them back when I leave. Once he gets confident about changing his bios settings, he could try out Linux whenever he wants to by just using knoppix. I was also careful not to save any files to my hard drive while booted from the knoppix disk so that I did not leave any unreadable open office 1.1.1 spread sheets on my hard drive. I am sure that his computer has at least the minimum requirements to run text only applications of linux. And since it is a Pentium II it should probably have enough RAM to run the graphical packages. My computer is a Pentium III. There is a slight risk to running the knoppix disk as was mentioned on the disclaimer, but I could ask him if he has the back up disks to restore his system if something should go wrong before trying out knoppix. I sure had a lot of fun with the knoppix disk. Regards, Michael Walters _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
