Knoppix 3.9 review + Download

Knoppix PC specs

Athlon XP at 1.8 GHz
386 MB of SDRAM
40 GB HDD
10x DVD-ROM
Floppy
Logitech USB mouse
Standard USB keyboard

Download Knoppix (710 MB ISO)

Knoppix will do everything you want Windows to do. People who use Internet and office suites might want to look at Knoppix. Knoppix has the most applications seen on CD ever. On load up the 2.6.x kernel loads the necessary drivers for you. This is called the boot up sequence. There are error messages, but the OS boots up anyways. This Linux doesn’t make a swap file on your HDD, but with decent PCs you really don’t need one. Knoppix 3.9 so far is the last Knoppix CD ISO available. Knoppix 4.0 and later started using a DVD and download was 3.5 GB. My satellite connection times out before I can get all of that data on my PC. I run Linux on a slow DVD-ROM so yours is probably faster. It runs KDE Desktop 3.4.0 which is pretty new considering the latest version is 3.4.2.

The default desktop wallpaper of an astronaut and the Earth in the background. The bad thing about Knoppix is it’s resolution is 1280x960 which is still better than the first Knoppix Knoppix has been stable since ver. 3.4 making v3.9 even more stable.

For compressing files Knoppix 3.9 has a right click menu with options to save to ZIP or TAR formats. USB thumb drives or USB HDD show up on the Desktop instantly unlike Knoppix 3.6 where I had to manually mount it myself. That’s an improvement.

The terminal responds much like Redhat Linux 8.0. Redhat 9.0 was the last Personal Linux distribution under Redhat who know makes Linux for servers. Knoppix 3.9 is two years newer than Redhat 9 and three years newer than Redhat 8.0. The performance issues you'll find with latest Linux will not be in Redhat no more.

Firefox loads web pages as fast as Firefox in Windows XP. MS Office 2003 is better than any Openoffice, but Openoffice would do everything a office suite should do. I downloaded OOo 2.0 beta 2 at noon today. I wrote this blog entry in Knoppix using OOo.

However I’ve been having trouble getting access to my Hard drive. It could just be that computer that is running Knoppix. I got around this by adding it to my email so I could edit it on Windows.

List of Programs

Web Browsers
Mozilla Firefox 1.0.4
Konquenor 3.4.0

Office Suites

Open Office 1.9.112

Software Development

Python 2.3.5
Kdevelop (crashed)

Editors

Joe (terminal notepad)
Kwrite 4.4 (GUI notepad)
Kate 2.4 (another GUI notepad)

Games

Chronoium (needs OpenGL acceleration)
Frozen Bubble
Galagia
Asteroids
GNU Chess (text Chess)
Kmajonhug (Chinese game of some sort)
Penguin FreeCell
Penguin Golf
Penguin Solitaire
Penguin Canfield
Gtens
Penguin Minesweeper
Katomic
Kbattleship
Ntetris
Enigma

Image Development

The Gimp 2.2.7
Kview 3.4
Knunkshow
KolourPaint 1.4

Internet

Gaim (MSN, Yahoo, IRC, ICQ, AIM)
Firefox 1.0.4
Ethernal (network IP node program)
KPPP dialup tool
Thunderbird 1.0.4 (email)
XIRC

Media

Aumix (sound card equalizer)
XMMS 2.3 - Looks like Winamp 2x. Plays mp3s, ogg, wav
Xine (with Xvid decoder) - requires plugin for WMA
Audacity (sound editor)
K3B (CD and DVD burning suite)

By default it doesn’t make the HDD writable which I guess prevents data saved on the Windows XP file system, NTFS. That can be solved by mounting the HDD

It's free and 696 MB what do you got to loose? It doesn't even mess around with your Windows file system unless you want to save something on your HDD using the desktop HDD1 drive.