What's the "something" you need to install? Are you sure you're logged in as root? Root has permission to do everything.

Yeah, I hate the KWeather program--that's the first thing I uninstall after installing Mepis. I just use Firefox's ForecastFox extension.

trying out Knoppix

Wonderfuly said

As aysiou says, there is nothing wrong w/it; but it is an option. In fact I find it really interesting. I have got debian sarge on a two harddrive workstation with no independent /home partition created....and I'm planning to change things w/ the idea of building one....

I had the same problem changing the screen resolution on SuSE. There's a separate screen/display settings manager that doesn't make it to the Control Panel area in KDE (it's one of those separate setting areas in KDE that drives me buggy ). You have to right-click on a blank area of your desktop to access it, and then change your screen resolution from there. Make sure to click a box that says something like, "Use this resolution when starting KDE." It drove me nuts with SuSE until I finally found the settings. Make sure to make the change not just as root, but as a user as well. The settings seem to be account specific.

Anyway, back to the original post...

Yes mate, Linux is AMAZING. I was in a similar position when I started out with Linux.
It's a crazy adventure.. twists.. turns... and potentially a lot of broken peripherals... but its worth it.

Once you get into it, you also get inadvertantly thrown into other things like scripting and programming.

Strongly recommend grabbing a distro and throwing yourself in at the deepend.

Enjoy

i have tried out kanotix, suse, redhat, so far kanotix seemed the best. is kanotix a full distro or more like a small one for users to try and play with. if it is not, what is most like it? kanotix had a nice looking desktop(kde-but i dont know which version) also isnt a newer version of kde comming out?
ps. Call me crazy, but has anyone every switched to linux because it has a nice graphical interface? haha....i like it!

---I am completely sure that if you had the guts to try Linux, you are proficient enough to seriously face Debian -a really serious GNU distro-...and you won't regret it....

Quote:

ps. Call me crazy, but has anyone every switched to linux because it has a nice graphical interface? haha....i like it!

---I am almost sure nobody did...but people do switch because Linux charms them....and builds a spell on them...like it did on me...and maybe will do on you...there is no doubt that -honestly- Linux gets you closer to your machine....and to computer and internet community world wide....

Regards,
Juanja

what about debian vs ubuntu vs slackware? i think i am down to those three.

---Well, AFAIK slackware seems to be one of the most 'beginner' flavour of linux....so it has its limitations in a proficient way to see it...but in the pros side it seems to be the easiest distro to learn from a window$ newcomer to linux......As for Ubuntu it is often referred to as 'the little sister of Debian'....that is all to say. Please gurus out there correct me if I am wrong.....

So there is just one left: native true Debian. All efforts you do with Debian will surely come back to you plus some interesting bonus: the ability of handling one of -if not the- most serious distro ever for Linux.....though maybe this is just an opinion......check out there the pros and cons of slack, Ub and Deb stuff.....I am almost sure that you will end up joining Debian ;-)

Good luck to you....

Juanja.

P.S.: Ah, BTW I am typing this in a full-functionally P200 MMX 160 Mb RAM in the beach side of south Spain....I am on holidays....running mozilla and displaying LinuxQuestions in full glory....

Umm, I haven't used anything besides Slackware so I don't really know, but it was my understanding that it was one of the most advanced Linux distros. Not to say it's impossible to learn, but it makes you use the command-line and learn your system rather than relying on graphical tools.

---Well, in fact yes, it is. Slackware is really user-close; and that makes it really good...

However Debian is really "linux-close"; and that leads you closer to linux...


---Debian has got as much as graphical interface you want. And the other is true too: Debian has got as much CLI (Command Line Interface) as you want. Mind you: I recompress my high definition trailers of 'Madagascar' and 'Shark's Tale' to mpeg-1 quarter screen just to play them for my little daughter in the P200 MMX we have got in the seaside house.......all steps thru mencoder with just a text-console open.... no gui for recompressing tasks...only just to watch them....All I mean is that under Debian several tasks can be done with or without the command line....

You might want to get into a class in UNIX and GNU/Linux at a community college or something. this will take you through the basics of the GNU/Linux operating system, and will usually go into some of the applications also.