The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Knoppix - for the Bookshelf Major Keary |
The popularity of the Knoppix bootable CD is at least in part due to its usefulness as a rescue utility. Knoppix is a Linux distro out of Germany and the live CD frequently appears on the covers of computer magazines and has been distributed as a 'monthly special' by Melb PC.
It is a great way of test driving Linux without altering anything on your system; is a good tool for establishing if a system is compatible with Linux and will recognise peripherals (printers, scanners, and the like); and, when the resident operating system fails, Knoppix can be used as a repair and rescue utility. Even if you haven't been converted to Linux, a Knoppix live CD (even if it's not the latest release) is a handy thing to have. In a foreword Klaus Knopper, creator of Knoppix, says his distro — which is based on Debian — was originally designed as a rescue disk, but has been developed as a Linux distribution in its own right.
A significant problem is the lack of documentation. There are lots of man pages and other on-line documentation, but the user has to know what to look for and where to find it. Online documentation is usually terse and not nearly as easy to use as a proper book.
Knoppix now has a book, Knoppix Hacks, published by O'Reilly. It is not a manual or reference in the ordinary sense. Each title in the hacks series represents the work of many people who have developed a particular solution, and that is how Knoppix Hacks works. It contains "100 industrial- strength tips and tools" that begin with booting Knoppix on a desktop, where to find it, running it on a laptop, running it from a hard disk, and using the command line.
If you want to learn Linux, especially how to use the command line, the Knoppix distro and this book make a powerful combination; the book, of course, comes with a Knoppix CD. Each 'hack' is a mixture of tutorial and discussion of underlying issues; by following the instructions (but taking care with the destructive commands, such as wiping a hard drive) the user should achieve a good grasp of Linux and how to use it.
The book is well written and does not require any special; technical knowledge. It is a matter of being sufficiently interested in learning Linux, or exploring the potential of the Knoppix CD as a rescue tool for Microsoft Windows or other installations of Linux. There is plenty of example code that can be downloaded from a companion Web site.
A great opportunity to experience a stable operating system and its extraordinary choice of applications; and they are all free.
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Kyle Rankin: Knoppix Hacks ISBN 0-596-00787-6 Published by O'Reilly, 314 pp. + CD, RRP $55.00 incl. GST |
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Reprinted from the August 2005 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
