I didn't see this mentioned in the forum before, so I wanted to pass it on. A couple of guys at work turned me on to it, and I think it's the coolest thing ever 🙂
Knoppix is an ISO you download and burn, then boot to that CD. It then creates a Linux filesystem in your RAM and loads certain files into it. Linux then loads (KDE by fefault, but you can spcify which WM you want), and you have a fully functional Linux machine. It has just about everything you could want in a distro... OpenOffice, XMMS, Gimp, a bunch of web browser, Xchat, and so much more. Using some compression, there is almost two gigs of data on the CD, which is loaded when it needs to be.
The OS runs fast on a machine that I tried it on with a ~500mhz proc and 256 megs of RAM. It mounts all of your drives in read-only mode (which can be changed later, of course), so you can access whatever data is on the machine. It does have a few restrictions for security, but I haven't run into anything that makes it unsable.
The possibilties for this are amazing to me. If you're interested in learning Linux, but don't want the commitment, this is a great way to go, since after you take the CD out of the drive, there's no trace it was ever there. It could be used as a troubleshooting tool when Windows won't boot, or maybe a data recovery tool. I don't remember if there is an FTP server included on the disk, but there are certainly ways to turn a system into a fileserver. You could even use it for looking at pr0n at work, heh.
Knoppix is an ISO you download and burn, then boot to that CD. It then creates a Linux filesystem in your RAM and loads certain files into it. Linux then loads (KDE by fefault, but you can spcify which WM you want), and you have a fully functional Linux machine. It has just about everything you could want in a distro... OpenOffice, XMMS, Gimp, a bunch of web browser, Xchat, and so much more. Using some compression, there is almost two gigs of data on the CD, which is loaded when it needs to be.
The OS runs fast on a machine that I tried it on with a ~500mhz proc and 256 megs of RAM. It mounts all of your drives in read-only mode (which can be changed later, of course), so you can access whatever data is on the machine. It does have a few restrictions for security, but I haven't run into anything that makes it unsable.
The possibilties for this are amazing to me. If you're interested in learning Linux, but don't want the commitment, this is a great way to go, since after you take the CD out of the drive, there's no trace it was ever there. It could be used as a troubleshooting tool when Windows won't boot, or maybe a data recovery tool. I don't remember if there is an FTP server included on the disk, but there are certainly ways to turn a system into a fileserver. You could even use it for looking at pr0n at work, heh.
