Knoppix and it's derivatives seem to be an increasingly popular way to install debian but what are the drawbacks, other than not getting certain packages?

There seem to be more useful Home utilities on a single CD than on multi-CD/DVD distributions.

Is it a little less secure than using Debian proper?

Is it something to do with it being an "unstable" version?

Knoppix and it's derivatives seem to be an increasingly popular way to install debian but what are the drawbacks, other than not getting certain packages?
speed at least, is the only thing that really cross my mind. pure debian is faster than knoppix, way faster

There seem to be more useful Home utilities on a single CD than on multi-CD/DVD distributions.
depends on what you call usefull , generally lots of people get only basic stuff and then add only what they need and remove what is useless. There are lots of thing useless for me in knoppix cd, like kde,gnome,their terminal server,etc...

Is it a little less secure than using Debian proper?
secure means am i able to secure it

Is it something to do with it being an "unstable" version?
doesn't really matter almost all debian user use debian testing/sarge or debian sid/unstable

mrcheeks, you are saying that it's faster even after the whole system is copied to the harddrive with everything uncompressed?

i meant that debian "REAL DEBIAN" is way faster than knoppix and other debian based distros.

From my experience... I came into the debian world through a knoppix hard drive install. I've been using my knoppix-debian for a month and loving every minute of it.

Last weekend I tried to install debian on one of my testing box. It took me over 5 hours and I still don't have my graphic card setup properly. sigh. It will take me longer until I have all my packages setup.

The thing is... I was able to install knoppix on the same box in less than 45 minutes following a tutorial I goggled.

I don't know what mr. cheeks means when he said "REAL DEBIAN" is faster. Maybe faster because knoppix uses more general drivers that work on most hardware?

I've used both. I can install Debian like it's nobody's business. But X would just go nuts on my laptop, I just couldn't configure it right. So, enter Knoppix 3.3, not a problem at all. Detected my wireless card, even my scroll on my touchpad. Amazing. After the harddrive install, it doesn't seem noticably slower than any Debian I've ever installed.

I guess one "downside" would be that it's Debain Unstable. Some people like stable, with their really old packages and stuff. (I run my text-only file server under 2.6 and unstable, never crashed once.)

Great advice if you can handle a multi-os install:

install debian and knoppix
use knoppix to grab particular files u need including those like XFree86Config-4 and others especially on a laptop that has wierd graphics resolution like 1400x1050 (my inspiron 8200)

other useful stuff like pcmcia-ide-opts from knoppix that allow one to automount flash media, yippee

DOWNSIDE: after upgrading to SID with modified apt/sources.list and kernel 2.6.3 nvidia installer could not get the gcc location right....didnt want to even fool with researching the proper switch as it might have caused probs in future

I have suse8.2 (which assured me alsa wasnt so bad though cpudyn and others screw with alsa's ability to play glitch free music when jumping from 1200 to 1700 Hz) also to grab particular files from as its performance (not boot however) are better for bzflag...anyway

keep at it

one great thing is that knoppix 3.3 uses kde3.1.5...no probs there
kde3.2 doesnt upgrade my menus though gnome2 twm and all others do
go figure

oh yeah knoppix 3.4 and overclockix 3.4 hddinstall kept having kernel panics even in linuxold
go figure never could get it right

just did a basic install with woody, ended before tasksel (make sure network configured) edited apt sources for sid and cut and pasted files...apt-get module-init-tools, reconfigured a new 2.6.4 kernel with initrd dsdt patch, compiled...BAM! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! then apt-get out this world!

badda bing badda boom--little more sophisticated than that now but it worked at the time, thank God

oh yeah knoppix gonna come with a buncha junk you may not need or take for granted...I successfully got the small fonts (video =794 or video=791) on my system and edited .bashrc in /root/ and bashprofile in /home/XXXX/

its a pain but great gratification when u get it right

how many greats was that?

How does Knoppix's hardware detection compare to other distros like Fedora or SuSe?

most people regard Knoppix's hardware detection as the cream of the crop when it comes to Linux distros. seriously though, it takes like maybe 4 seconds to find all of my devices every time i boot knoppix. that is swift compared to a pokey fedora or mandrake install.

I installed Debian unstable on a file server here (unstable is the key word) , updated and then Debian would no longer recognise the network card. I gave up, threw the Knoppix CD in , installed to hard disk and upgraded to Debian unstable according to instructions at http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2251 No worries since then.

I also use Debian on my laptop as a learning/playground as it is not my primary o/s. looking at the specs of Knoppix 3.4 make me feel that I really should be running Knoppix instead of Debian eg: Linux Kernel 2.4.26 and, as a boot option, Kernel 2.6.5, both ACPI-enabled ,New IRDA/Bluetooth-Setup. GPRS internet-connection ready. But I'm prepared to learn a bit and break a lot HTH

The only drawback I know of is that the init scripts are heavily customized and tied to the kernel (which is also customized), so that you can't just apt-get install another kernel without breaking things. It's also more difficult to install things like lm-sensors which depend upon kernel modules (there's a long discussion on the Knoppix.net about that).

OTOH, I tried to install both Debian stable and unstable on my fastest computer, the one with an AGP 8x NVidia-based video card, and I couldn't get X working... it was like banging my head against a brick wall.

Knoppix, on the other hand, installs and runs with no problems whatsoever.

Hey,
I'm thinking about switching to knoppix, can u tell me the url of the tutorial?

Thanks, It will be greatly appriciated

>> can u tell me the url of the tutorial

Hint : http://www.google.com.au/advanced_search?hl=en :-)

Seriously now ...

http://www.freenet.org.nz/misc/knoppix-install.html

I found the Knoppix fourms very useful and newbie friendly

http://knoppix.net/forum/