help knoppix liveCD

[grgreen]

I'm completely new to Linux. Any help out there would be appreciated...
I downloaded Knoppix 5.1 and it downloaded as an .iso file. I burned it to CD but can not get my computer to boot from the CD. I've checke the boot order and changed it so my CD drive is first, but still no dice. Any pointers???

[jbennet]

did you burn it right?

you DONT just burn the .iso as a file, you need to use a special ISO burner.

Have a look at DeepBurner (dont buy pro - theres a free version available). With Deepburner its as simple as choosing burn ISO and selecting the ISO to be burned.

[grgreen]

Thank you very much. I'm in the process of burning it with DeepBurner now. Thanks so much for your help.

[grgreen]

ok, so I burned the .iso image just fine and it booted from the cd, but its all in germa. I'm positve I downloaded the English version. Is there a way to change the language settings before I attmept another 2 hour download?

[jbennet]

when you get to the textbased part that requires you to hit enter (should usually say something like boot: ) change it to read this:

boot: knoppix lang = us keyboard=us, xkeyboard=us

knoppix also isnt a particuarly good distibution to begin linux with by the way. You may want to take a look at ubunntu instead as it is much easier and runs off the cd like knoppix, although it has an icon that allows you to install if you want.

[grgreen]

Thanks again, I got it to work fine. Now that I know the steps to take, I'm going to try Ubunntu like you suggested. Thanks!

[jbennet]

http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/desktopedition

you want the 6.10 (efty eft) version not the 6.10 LTS (dapper drake) version

[mepnoob2005]

You'll like ubuntu better than knoppix. The knoppix-installer is a bit vague. And when you are done you might not have the same system as the live cd. If you install knoppix and choose to install like the live cd you won't have a root password option. If you install the debian version of knoppix it won't look like knoppix. Ubuntu has an installer that is almost as easy as the MEPIS installer. You just have to be sure to choose the right partitions to install to when using the ubuntu installer. If you don't like the gnome desktop that ubuntu has and want a kde desktop like knoppix then I would say try MEPIS. MEPIS uses the same repositories as ubuntu so you will get all of the same apps through synaptic package manager. Good luck and welcome to linux.

[jbennet]

one word mepnoob. Kubuntu

[mepnoob2005]

Anything with kde, that works. PClinuxOS, MEPIS, kubuntu, It doesn't really matter. Kubuntu feels like a throttled back ubuntu. MEPIS is the easiest of the three to set up. For me. MEPIS has MEPIS X-Windows assistant, MEPIS user assistant, MEPIS network assistant and MEPIS system assistant. All of these make MEPIS easier to run that the other guys.

[John A]

Anything with kde, that works. PClinuxOS, MEPIS, kubuntu, It doesn't really matter. Kubuntu feels like a throttled back ubuntu. MEPIS is the easiest of the three to set up. For me. MEPIS has MEPIS X-Windows assistant, MEPIS user assistant, MEPIS network assistant and MEPIS system assistant. All of these make MEPIS easier to run that the other guys.

I'm sorry mepnoob, but this is the last straw. Exactly 18 of your posts so far do NOT have a single mention of MEPIS. That's a meagre 24%. This is getting too much for me to bare.

I'm sure it's a great distro and all that, but I simply cannot take it. I came here to discuss Linux distros, not "how great MEPIS is". Rather than start a flame war here, I am simply going to add you to my "ignore" list. Goodbye.

[mepnoob2005]

Well whoop-de-doo. Pardon me all to heck for referring to the easiest, best linux for a newbie to start with so much. Do you think I should support some other version of linux just to keep you off my back? Don't hold your breath. Maybe I should tell everyone to use the one you use? Not likely as I've probably already discarded your favorite version of linux to the junk cd coaster pile anyways. No problem about ignoring a user. That's your perogitive. Joe I can do that too. But I'm not that narrowminded as to seclude myself into my own little world believing that if I don't see it it must not be there.
I used knoppix a lot in 2004. That's what led me to MEPIS. Both have kde and use debian repos.

Thanks for ignoring me. I'll do the same for your posts. You are the one who is losing. Your narrowminded comments just show what you're made of. An old stick in the mud.
So what if so many of my posts were about MEPIS. Most of the threads were about MEPIS too or did you forget to include that little fact in your speech. Obviously you did. Just more of your unresearched posts. Based on feelings and not fact.
I guess it's not unusual that you should react this way when you have a signature like the one you have.

I guess that's what you really get (from your sig) when you stand up for something in your life. Bye. Until we meet again.:lol:

[John A]

I did happen to glance at your post, and I will say this:

I'm glad you have found a Linux distro that you enjoy and love. I'm also glad that your opinions are based on personal experience, and that you aren't just trying to please someone (like me). In fact, I don't mind it at all if you recommend it to other people.

What I will say however, is that no Linux distro is perfect, and the "best Linux distro for newbies" is highly subjective. Every operating system, and I mean every operating system has flaws and disadvantages. If there was such a thing as a "perfect OS for newbies", there would be only one operating system still surviving today. Ignoring to admit the flaws that exist in your preferred OS/distro is foolish.

Furthermore, launching personal attacks against members who have spent many, many hours on these forums, name-calling and overall ignoring the hard work that they might have done when you weren't here is not a good idea.

[mepnoob2005]

joeprogrammer I'm not trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill but the least that you could do is try MEPIS yourself. Try SimplyMEPIS 6.5 rc3 32 or 64 version on a test partition that I'm sure you have. Give it a good working over. Then if you find some faults with it that I can't remedy for you then I will quit pushing so hard for everyone to try MEPIS.
If you try MEPIS and have a problem that I can't fix then I promise to NEVER mention MEPIS on a non MEPIS thread. Ever. I will only ever talk about MEPIS on a MEPIS thread. MEPIS isn't perfect. It is pretty close though. I know I always talk about how easy MEPIS is and how good it is for new users but there are a lot of new users that run into one problem or another with MEPIS. This isn't the only forum I post on so I know that some guys have certain problems. But it is rare to see troubles that are not fixable. I didn't mean anything personal just that you kept arguing against MEPIS when you admittedly haven't used it so I thought I would try and get you to test it and then you could have some credibilty (at least in my eyes) about saying whatever you want about MEPIS. Test it and then you win. Get your copy of 6.5 at linuxtracker.org . Otherwise you shouldn't talk about something that you have no experience in. No matter how many times you have posted. Peace.

[John A]

Something's wrong with this picture. You're saying that you're going to keep annoying us until someone gives in and tries MEPIS. I don't like the sound of that at all.

And although I have never used MEPIS, I have not seen a single positive user experience of it in this forum besides you. How do you explain a thread like this? You tried to help, yes. But any system can be configured by a newbie if they have an expert helping them.

I'm also skeptical of MEPIS's support for my system. I'm very unconvinced a distro that's based on another distro whose installer wiped out my partition table the last time I tried to install it is going to do much better. Most distro designers don't worry about Macs when they develop them.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against MEPIS or any of the distros I have not tried yet. But my time is not unlimited, and I simply cannot afford to try out the hundreds of available distros out there today. In fact I am not even using Linux right now, I am using Mac OS X, which is for the most part, solid.

[mepnoob2005]

Something's wrong with this picture. You're saying that you're going to keep annoying us until someone gives in and tries MEPIS. I don't like the sound of that at all.

And although I have never used MEPIS, I have not seen a single positive user experience of it in this forum besides you. How do you explain a thread like this? You tried to help, yes. But any system can be configured by a newbie if they have an expert helping them.

I'm also skeptical of MEPIS's support for my system. I'm very unconvinced a distro that's based on another distro whose installer wiped out my partition table the last time I tried to install it is going to do much better. Most distro designers don't worry about Macs when they develop them.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against MEPIS or any of the distros I have not tried yet. But my time is not unlimited, and I simply cannot afford to try out the hundreds of available distros out there today. In fact I am not even using Linux right now, I am using Mac OS X, which is for the most part, solid.

I think you are the only one who is annoyed.
Whats a person who has never used MEPIS doing saying that MEPIS wiped the boot sector out? MEPIS has been out longer than ubuntu. We share the same repositories as ubuntu because warren was tired of fixing all the bugs in debian. The MEPIS installer is way better than the ubuntu one. Easier to use but still a good idea to read a guide first so you know what to expect. MEPIS is nothing like ubuntu. Period.
.
if you had done a little research before you tried to install maybe that wouldn't have wrecked your Mbr. But you can't blame a installer for your admitted in-experience. I just wish I had been here to show you how to do it. Then maybe you would have a different opinion.
And your skeptisism is based on facts? I think not.
You said this joe
"And although I have never used MEPIS, I have not seen a single positive user experience of it in this forum besides you."
That's no surprise when you try and help MEPIS users with absolutly no MEPIS experience. No wonder.

Until I came here the MEPIS specific support was weak to put it mildly. Your link cries that out loud. I see the user didn't post back as I'm sure my couple of posts helped where your multiple posts just confused the issue.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I doubt that there is anyone at this forum who knows more about MEPIS than me. If they are here they are not active posters.
I have the MEPIS specific experience that you lack. I want to help MEPIS users. You constantly get in the way of that. I have personally written about three thousand posts on the forums I post at helping new users with MEPIS and I have been thanked wholeheatedly by so many users that it's un-believable. I don't like to count the times I've been thanked as it is seems like bragging but let the chips fall where they may. I have helped countless users with MEPIS and that's what I am doing here. You on the other hand have been trying to help but how can you expect to help with MEPIS when you have no real personal experience? Let me handle the MEPIS posts and you help where you have actual experience, which I imagine is quite a lot. Just not with MEPIS.
All your constant badgering is doing is going to make me want to not bother with posting help here. But I can't ignore anyone who is trying to run MEPIS.
And you said it well here when you said " But any system can be configured by a newbie if they have an expert helping them."
Exactly what I am trying to do. Help new users with MEPIS. I'm just sorry that I wasn't here to help you get MEPIS running. Then you wouldn't have such a bad taste in your mouth. I can't think of any other logical reason to explain your negativity towards MEPIS. You failed with MEPIS due to in-experience and now you have a hate on for MEPIS. You failed so you don't want anyone else to suffer as you did with MEPIS. Well that's just dandy. I don't want anyone to fail with MEPIS. Not you, not anyone. I can use it for everything I need. Including voice/webcam instant messenger. Sure it's with yahoo but it works. And all I did to install it was left click a deb file. That's an example of MEPIS ease.

[John A]

>Whats a person who has never used MEPIS doing saying that MEPIS wiped the boot sector out?
Let me clarify: I meant that Ubuntu wiped my boot sector. What I was trying to say is that I don't trust things that are similar to Ubuntu.

>if you had done a little research before you tried to install maybe that wouldn't have wrecked your Mbr.
I never said anything about my MBR.

>But you can't blame a installer for your admitted in-experience.
You probably have no concept of Macs' partition setup with EFI and whatnot. The issue is not that I didn't know what I was doing in the built-in partitioner, the issue was that the installer didn't give me a shell to let me fdisk it. fdisk can work properly with the partition table on Macs, whereas installers' built-in partitioners tend to fail. I have had quite a number of distros erase my partition table because they refused to give me a Linux shell, including the previously-mentioned Ubuntu. This is not from lack of ignorance. Period.

So I guess my real question is: does MEPIS give you the Linux shell as an alternative to its "built-in" partitioner? If not, I simply cannot trust it with my hard drive.

>That's no surprise when you try and help MEPIS users with absolutly no MEPIS experience. ./configure is not specific to MEPIS. Neither were the other tools he was trying to use.

>Until I came here the MEPIS specific support was weak to put it mildly.
Obviously because not very many people here use it.

>I want to help MEPIS users. You constantly get in the way of that.
There are exactly 3 threads regarding a MEPIS user asking for help that I have posted in. And you were nowhere to be seen when I posted in them.

[happygeek]

OK guys, this debate is getting hot enough to require cooling off before it turns into a real flame war.

Let's agree to differ on this one.

I would say, though, that there is a fine line between being proactive with help and support and being overly evangelistic regarding one distro. The latter can, and indeed does, lead to overheated threads.

[mepnoob2005]

>Whats a person who has never used MEPIS doing saying that MEPIS wiped the boot sector out?
Let me clarify: I meant that Ubuntu wiped my boot sector. What I was trying to say is that I don't trust things that are similar to Ubuntu.

That is plain ignorance. Look the word up before you flip out.
"MY point is that MEPIS is NOT like ubuntu in any way that you can see. If you would have tried MEPIS you would know that. The ONLY thing MEPIS shares with ubuntu is the repositories. They are nothing alike. Ubuntu uses gnome. MEPIS uses kde. Ubuntu has an installer that is vauge even for an expert. Easy to screw that one up although I never have. I've been installing with hard to use installers like debian, ubuntu and knoppix with no problems.

joeprogrammer said
" I have had quite a number of distros erase my partition table because they refused to give me a Linux shell, including the previously-mentioned Ubuntu. This is not from lack of ignorance. Period."

I said
"Well you're right for once when you said this was not from lack of ignorance. You don't suffer from that. You did look up ignorance did you not?"

joeprogrammer said
"So I guess my real question is: does MEPIS give you the Linux shell as an alternative to its "built-in" partitioner? If not, I simply cannot trust it with my hard drive."

I said
Finally.... a real question about MEPIS
"We have konsole. You can become root and do whatever you like but the MEPIS gui installer is the best one ever. You don't need the shell to install. You have total control as to which partition gets used as root, home, linux/swap. It's not like the ubuntu, debian, knoppix or any other installer. It's easy and it works. You have gparted in the live cd environment and it does an awesome job at any partitioning that you need. You can't screw it up unless you use the 'auto install' option. The auto install will use all of the hard drive and wipe out everything in it's path. But if you have some partitions already in place you just tell the installer to 'custom install' to existing partitions. And that's what the installer will do.You decide which partition to put root, linux/swap and home on. There is a box that will drop down when you click it that will show every partition that you have and what size it is so the only way you can screw up is to tell the installer to put root , swap and home on the wrong partitions. That might not even happen to you if you know which partition is which. And if you don't know which is which then just run gparted while in the live cd environment and print it out so you won't bung it up. A kid could install to the right partitions if he could just read. My 5 1/2 yeart old son has been dual booting xp and MEPIS since he was 4 by himself. He boots xp now and then but mostly MEPIS so you should be able to do it too. What does osx use for a bootloader? If it is grub then you will have absolutely no problems with the MEPIS installer. And with me in your court. And I'm there to help. Just let me. I'll help you. I get mad now and then but I never stay mad for long. Even if i was mad i would help you as honestly as i could. Just download the MEPIS 6.5 rc3 cd and try it. You won't have to install it and it won't install by itself. You have to click the install me icon. And even then you can still back out of the install before it actually goes off.

You quoted and said
>That's no surprise when you try and help MEPIS users with absolutly no MEPIS experience. ./configure is not specific to MEPIS. Neither were the other tools he was trying to use.

I say
"Just more confusing the new user with ./configure when the app was there in synaptic package manager all the time. Your in-experience with MEPIS
was the problem in that thread."

>Until I came here the MEPIS specific support was weak to put it mildly.
Obviously because not very many people here use it.

I say again
"No wonder when there is no real MEPIS help here from you at least."

>I want to help MEPIS users. You constantly get in the way of that.
There are exactly 3 threads regarding a MEPIS user asking for help that I have posted in. And you were nowhere to be seen when I posted in them.

Well csgal only just asked me to come and post here again a little while ago.
In an email. So that's why I came back. Lucky thing huh?
And there is that great forum called 'Getting started and choosing a Distro'
I like it and I will post helpful posts as often as I can. My posts are always helpful unless someone tries to sound like they know about MEPIS when they have no real clue. That's you joe where MEPIS is concerned. You just don't know. If you are so worried about your hard drive then buy another one. They're cheap nowadays. I just bought two pata 250 Gb drives at futureshop for $99. bucks a piece in december.
This whole snobbish bs that I have been wading through has almost got me to leave this site but I don't quit. I never give up, ever. Not when I am right. I speak from MEPIS experience and you keep comparing MEPIS with distros that MEPIS is absolutly nothing like.

You must have 15 or 20 gigs of spare space that you could create some partitions to install MEPIS to? I mean you don't need a lot of space just to try MEPIS for a little while. You need a 5 Gb root partition formatted as ext3. You need a 7-8 Gb home. A bit small for dvd work but it will do for most things. You need a linux/swap partition of 1Gb it has to be formatted as linux/swap. That's it. You can do it with 14 Gb. Then you can wipe MEPIS off the face of your drives whenever you feel like it.. Nothing ventured nothing gained.
Remember which partition is which and you should have no trouble.
This link will help you to configure your boot loader whether you use yaboot or bootx .
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/2004.2/handbook-ppc.xml?part=1&chap=10
It's gentoo but it should work for you and MEPIS.
If you can chainload with your bootloader then you could install MEPIS grub to root and then edit your boot/menu.list to show the new entry.
By the looks of things you should install the MEPIS grub to root. Don't install it to the Mbr of hda or it will erase the master boot record in a jiffy. I don't know how hard or easy mac is to re-write ther boot sector. Easy with MEPIS though.

You know....I really don't know why I bother. You'll never try MEPIS. I'm just wasting my time with you that I could use/spend helping someone else.
I'm not going to post back to you any more if you don't want help trying MEPIS. And if you don't want help with MEPIS then do us both a favor and stay off of my threads. I've had my fill of arguing with someone who knows nothing about MEPIS and refuses to try and learn. If you do decide to try MEPIS then I will do what I can to make it work for you like I do for every new MEPIS user. Bye for now. Flame off. End of rant.:sad:

[jbennet]

oh dear. i go on holiday and look what happens :( lol i thaught we had all decided to get along...

[alienlinux]

i agree on the whole with mepnoob, if he's found his dream linux in mepis and wants to flaunt it, why the not?
people who havn't tried it can't comment on the validity of his claims and i for one would never do that, seems to me this joeprogrammer is a hot head as my recent pm's with him have shown me and he has issues like his repeated posts on installers trashing his partitions. i've not seen much non-derogatory posts from what i see so far, i have a feeling he gets nicer on other forums.

fact is, if a distribution works well for you, (for my 2 penneth worth, i use gentoo, debian and openbsd) then good for you, flaunt it to the world because its not like linux gets enough advertising out there. you have to be weary of preaching to the choir though, which is what i see you guys do quite a bit. if mepis solved this thread then the post was relevant, some people don't understand freedom of speech!

[John A]

There's no need to dig up an old flame thread.

[alienlinux]

yeah like you don't do that lol - sure sorry i'll shut up now :P