Hello,

I'd like to install Kaella-knoppix live CD on a friend's second-hand PC. I've found some documentation saying you can install with knoppix-installer after booting on the cd. kaella-knoppix is a French adaptation of knoppix.

That's fine but I'd like to first wipe out the whole HDD which has only one partition and WinXP installed -- not my doing ;-).

So I'd like to use "Wipeout.exe". My question is will the Live CD boot on an empty disk or does it need windoz installed?

I could create a few partitions but still would the CD require Windows?

The PC was sold with windoz installed but no Win CDrom so no way of reinstalling windoz. I suppose I could use my own win98cd for just the time it takes to install knoppix.... since anyway the present version was illegally installed by the vendor...

I've read somewhere it's always best to wipe out the HDD before using Linux to create new partitions.

What would you advise me to do?

Linux live cds like Knoppix don't require any OS or even any hard drive. They boot from the cd and run in RAM.
Knoppix has a nice GUI tool for making/deleting partitions called qtparted but I would make sure your friend really wants to remove everything before you do.

Presuming that kaella-knoppix installs the same way as knoppix normally does, I believe that it should offer you the partition options i.e. that it cant find a linux partition and so you can just tell it to format the whole disc and install it from there.

Surely, if that's what you intend, it doesn't matter ??? And yes, I believe that it should run ok even if you've binned everything from the hdd

regards

John

Many thanks for your replies!

Yes, I've saved all the necessary files that was on the HDD, and am ready to install Linux because my friend doesn't like M$, and wants everything GNU/GPL .

Yes, Kaella-knoppix has qparted.

Yes, I can install from the LiveCD without erasing and formatting the HDD beforefhand, but I've read it's best to use windows tools to erase windows partitions, and Linux tools to erase Linux partitions.

Anyway this PC will run on Linux only, and probably only on Kaella-knoppix which looks really good (tried it Live).

This is untrue. The only valididty to this statement coems with NTFS, which parted can erase, but not resize, well.