What exactly is the difference between a real Debian distro and KNOPPIX and is there any?

I bought and used Mandrake 8 .X and SuSE previously but both of them had small and annoying problems I didn't like.

I d/led and did a hard drive install of KNOPPIX 3.3 and so far I am extermly impressed. It found ALL of my hardware without ANY problems whatsoever. The installation was totally painless and with NO problems.
I am thinking of trying the real Debian distro.

Then i read a tread( here I think) from a user who complained of "stone age computing" installation when it comes to Debain distro. So how different ARE Debian and KNOPPIX? I carefully chose and bought my hardware to make sure it works under Linux.
I KNOW my question is a bit vague, but I hope somebody can give me some details as to what to expect from Debian. I am an older user who takes my time to study and learn as much as I can before I take the plunge. I am a long time Windoze user and I am having a bit of a difficult time letting go of Windoze due to all the programs/apps I have been accustomed to use under it.

Search Suguru. I was told that my hd install produce a debian sid.
I had Woody but never advanced with it.
I did apget for parted. After an hour online my lib-c and other
dependencies were updated and I had parted.
Unfortunately I was in dual boot with WinXP and can't yet use the
hd because of Win virus.

debian and slack are the ,maual transmissions of operating systems, the debian install is brutal. only undertake it if you understand exactly what you are doing.

i find gentoo to be a good learning ground for all the concepts you will need for a debian install

The Knoppix difference is the custom scripts that make everything run from the CD and are leftover but not really used much on the install, the sysvinit that is installed and will never be upgraded but is rather simple to replace once you know how and the configuration of the packages so most will work without effort by you. You can expect pretty much the same behavior when you install Debian if the hardware works with Knoppix it will work with Debian it is just a matter of how much effort you have to put into it to get it going. If you want to get Debian on the box without the pain of the Woody installer use a distro called Bonzai Linux (used to be called MiniWoody) it installs a Woody system with fairly up to date packages. You may want if you have enough room on your HD to make a partition install Debian or Bonzai and use the knoppix install as a base to see how things are configured and use similar in your new install until you get things the way you like them then delete the Knoppix for extra storage space or putting another distro in for testing.

http://download.berlios.de/bonzai/

thanx for all the answers. I think I understand most of what you are saying. Need to do a lot more learning and testing.

I've just been through an installation of Knoppix to hard disk, and upgraded it completely (as completely as I can) to Debian "unstable", and I'm a newbie, so maybe I should give my perspective on this.

Compared to other methods of installing Debian, the Knoppix route is very easy. I felt like I needed to upgrade it immediately for security reasons, so I tried to use apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade to upgrade the system, after cleaning out the sources.list file. Notice that it's full of German references. You'll need to find mirrors near you. I decided to upgrade my system entirely to "unstable" rather than try to maintain Knoppix's mixed system, so my sources.list file was cut down to three lines before I started to upgrade.

Instead of starting with apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade, I should have installed synaptic immediately, and then used it to upgrade the system.

As it was, apt-get upgrade installed a few things, then failed, and then I had trouble installing one of the packages that synaptic depended on (see the "libxv1 won't install" thread).

DwightDE, I've had problems with dist-upgrade on Knoppix.

Could you clarify how to clean up the sources.list and then use the tool you mentioned to bring all up to date.

Hi,
I've just read that some newbie choose to "upgrade to unstable". If you read the debian site you'll see there's three kind of packages:
- stable have been checked and found safe
- testing are quite safe but still suffer little problems
- unstable means unstable. There you can find the edge but not fully tested. you seems to like the risks : )

Maybe you'll find the missing package in stable or testing.
I prefer the testing kind (Sarge) and unstable (sid) only if need be.
I'm quite conservative for a linux user : )

Take care, Marc A

zaharia, also have a look here
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Knoppix

Knoppix 3.3 (like kde 3.1.5 > 3.2) hddinstall is great until upgrading or configuring kernel. Several pieces of software that are there u probably dont need.

If ya got an nVidia card, their drivers work but after upgrading to SID including a new GCC, and the 2.6.X kernel, bam...problems! galore!

Debian is a pain but not God Awful. Invest in partition magic 8.0 / boot magic until u can get familiar with configuring lilo.

A great tip! Also get Norton Systemworks (current or last version)

WTD: Backup windows to cd using ghost, get back in and create partitions for boot magic (small 32mb primary or extended partition) and linux (ext2, ext3, or reiserfs). Install Boot Magic

Reboot and boot from backup cds and place image in partition (no worries about windows funky ntloader ....)

Now for Linux. Make sure to include the boot loader for linux in root (/) partition. Do not replace mbr! Leave alone!

Tasksel is ok but, unghhhhhhhh
if network configured properly get out and use the lovely apt-get for x-window-system, kde ....

Sorry it took me so long to get back here. Here are more details about the newbie transition from Knoppix to a fully updated Debian "unstable" installation:

* Set up Knoppix so that it can handle your network. Don't make a lot of other changes. I changed too many visual elements before installing, and was rewarded with a corrupted message that was supposed to have told me where to find knoppix configuration files after installation. Also, since you might have to try this more than once, you'll have wasted less time if you just do the minimum here.

* run "knoppix-installer" - Start a command shell by clicking the monitor with a shell on it on the taskbar. Type "su" at the prompt. If prompted for a password, just hit "enter". When you see the # prompt you are superuser. Enter "knoppix-installer".

* Clean out the /etc/apt/sources.list - I use only three lines in the sources list. The easiest way to set it up is probably to rename the sources.list file to something like my_original_sources.list, and then run apt-get setup to write the file from scratch. I think that's the command. I can't verify it right now. I also added the security updates line to get security updates for "stable". Logically, that shouldn't do anything since the system is being updated to "unstable", but I've done it in hopes that anything that is capable of using the updates will get them.

* Set up your graphics hardware - Once you've updated to "unstable" you may be unable to access the control panel page for setting up hardware, so set up your monitor and graphics card now. Be sure it's done right.

* apt-get install synaptic - You'll have to be superuser, of course.

* Fix the failed apt-get install of synaptic - It will probably fail with some message about not being able to overwrite some file with a very long path name. So, type something like:
dpkg install --force-overwrite file_with_long_path.deb
(I can't remember the exact syntax.)

* Use synaptic to finish updating - There's a System Update button. Click it, then click Apply, then click Smart Update when prompted. This will take care of some of the updates, but probably not all. Just keep repeating the process, and it will eventually finish the update.

I think that's it. Good luck, and let me know what snags you hit. I'm sure I've missed something in here somewhere.

Why I upgraded to "unstable":

Sure, you'll have a more stable and more secure system if you stick with stable. Mine certainly was, because it wouldn't connect to the network. Also, the graphics hardware wasn't recognized, so it was horrible to look at.

I'm sure that with a week or two of constant fiddling, I could have gotten it to work... Maybe.

Knoppix takes care of all of that for you. And, since Knoppix is based on "unstable", once you've installed from Knoppix, "downdating" to "stable" is probably not a good idea.

So, if it's not a mission-critical system, and you can't get there any other way, the Knoppix-Debian unstable path is a reasonable way to get Debian.

has anyone tried the debian-installer yet?

http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

zaharia ,
I am also a relative novice to Linux. I have tried installing about 5 distros and found Knoppix (not plain Debian) and Fedora (Red Hat 10) the most friendly. I particularly like the Knoppix3.2 or 3.3 hard drive install. I then do apt-get install synaptic and use synaptic for additional software.
Note: after you install synaptic you will find it in /etc/sbin/synaptic or in /etc/bin/synaptic and you can drag the icon to the desktop and create a launcher (shortcut in windows parlance).
Good Hunting,
Vince