I've got a laptop I like too much to leave aside, even after Winbloz broke down the hard disk (twice!) and I gave up trying to instal bloated Linux distros to an external PCMCIA hard disk. It's a Toshiba Satellite 1625CDT. Nice laptop, AMD K-6 II at 475 Mhz, 192 MB RAM, 12" TFT screen, ATI Rage LT Pro video card, Conexant modem, Cirrus Crystal SoundFusion CS4281 sound card.
I came up Knoppix on the net and I had to try it. So I got a 3.2 (Spanish) version and set out to play.
So, I let it boot, and it detected all my hardware. Loaded the modules for my hard disk, and mounted the partitions alright.
What can I say; Knoppix has (almost) all. Ok, I work mostly with text stuff since I'm a translator. So, the K- and Open Office's suites are very good for the job. I've no problem importing those M$-Office files, and no client has complained about not being able to open or work with the files I've sent back in their "favorite" propietary formats. Actually, I've only one complaint: somebody couldn't open an .rtf file, but that's Apple's fault, not Linux, ;-). By the way, with KWriter, OpenOffice Writer and Lyx you can generate pdf files very easily.
Graphics are present in Knoppix too. A host of viewers for fax, ghostscrip, pdf, dvi, several image formats is available. Scribus deals awfully well with desktop publishing and graphic design, even if it's a bit slow while working with tens-of-pages files. There's the best image editor around, The Gimp; I can't remember now when was the last time I used Photo$hop! And there are apps for dealing with scanners, too.
On to the sound stuff. XMMS plays most audio files. It has an equalizer for boosting those bass frequencies and some cute visualizations. Audacity should edit sound; however, when I figure out how to get it to work without halting, I'll let you know :-(. For the ones that want MIDI notation and such, Rosegarden's supposed to do the trick. Of course, KMix and aumix will let you fix the noise, I mean, sound levels! The radio stuff I cannot use, so, can't say if works or not.
There are commandline players and recorders, too. Play, rec, grammofile, sound-record seem to work fine. I mean, the recorders produce right-size files (I've attempted to record to .wav) that upon playing produce no sound. This is weird, because I set the mic input right, run the stuff as root, and can hear through the headphones the sound coming in from the mic. Ideas anyone?
Video, well, I prefer Xine since I don't have a network to play with LAN clients and such, nor a TV-capture card. Xine deals efficiently with DVDs, VCDs, DivX, Xvid, and other video stuff (no Real). You can resize the window while playing without causing halts. Also, you can play movies in full-screen, even the ones in FAT32 partitions (unless they're too deep inside the tree).
Well, regarding net stuff, there are a lot of apps. I've succeeded in installing a driver for my modem (after setting up Knoppix to build a "persistent home" in the external hard disk) and was able to go online. I've 2 providers, one uses PAP/CHAP, so I couldn't figure out the CHAP part and was unable 2 use it. But the other ISP only uses PAP, so I could go online. I used Mozilla web browser. It's faster surfing than Windoze. Even when it's just 41k conexion. File downloading wasn't much impressive. I couldn't figure out KGet, but once I do, I'll try that instead. I think I should achieve 10K+ speeds at least, since I used to get up to 50K speeds with Winblows.
There are apps for DSL, Wi-Fi (airsnort), ISDN, mail, web browsing, messaging, etc.
For the ones that like some play, not just work, Knoppix provides some entertainment. There are arcade, adventure, strategy, card, fun, puzzles, tetris-like, board and tactics games. Some are meant to be played over a net, others can be played in your local PC. All work fast, except Chromium that's so heavy it's unusable.
If you like development, you got it (KDevelop, Python, Tclsh, and more).
If you want faster window-managers, you got it (WindowMaker, Xfce, Fluxbox, and others). The default's a bloated KDE with translucent menues (Keramik), which I happen to like a lot ;-).
If you want to save your exotic configuration (you can twik Knoppix's appearance to your liking), you can do it either to a floppy disk or to a permanent "home" partition (if you have a spare ext2 partition, it will make a "home" file in there) or file (if you only got FAT stuff) the size you want (depending on free space, of course).
With a permanent "home" you can also save all your files created during Knoppix reign time ;-). Also, you can encrypt your "home" with AES at creation time (if you have something you desire to hide, and feel like typing real long passwords upon boot).
Power management works fine; suspends when I close the lid, resumes fine when I press the power button, even after a couple hours in suspend-to-RAM). And Xfce keeps the battery working for an hour or so.
Overall, Knoppix sets out to show Linux capabilities. It even includes KStars, a sky map which you can use to track stars, planets, and the like according to date or place.
Also, you can test or play with emulators like Bochs and Wine. If you know how to deal with them, you can set up virtual PCs from inside Knoppix and use Windoze apps.
If you need access to 'root' capabilities, you can either use 'su' or X-terminal as root in order to do that. However, first you should go to the first terminal and set root's password (Ctrl+Alt+F1). Unless you feel like skipping the password stuff and just open Knoppix's "root console" (in the KNOPPIX menu), and forget about passwords.
Well, there are some interesting executables in /usr/bin like dvgrab, dvd+rw-format, dvdrecord and plipconfig that you can play with ;-).
Something to remember: Knoppix runs entirely in RAM. That makes it suitable for carrying around your Linux "box" wherever you can lay your hands on a relatively modern computer. And it makes you wonder what would be like having a PC with Knoppix as its main harddisk-based OS, since while running in RAM it's faster than other distros I've tested on real installations.
(Tino, aka sergeigz, sergeigz@mixmail.com)
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