On trying to install driver for Samsung printer under Kanotix 2005-04, found that cdrom won't autostart, has to be manually mounted in root mode, and even then, although you can see the files on the CD, the executables won't run.
Kanotix website forum has complaint about this from last year.Hmmmm.
Enough of my life wasted on linux.
Always "new and improved" distros with new problems.

Did you try to fix the problem with the cd or not? Linux does take some hand tweaking even in the most automatic of distros. Post your fstab file and we'll see what we can do.

Appreciate your offer of assistance. Actually, I wasted 2 days of my life (much to the annoyance of my SO) googling, browsing forums, and searching books to try and find a fix. Although having flirted with Linux for over a decade, am basically a newbie because of intimidation by the rather steep learning curve. New graphic versions such as Knoppix and Kanotix seem to offer window-like ease of use. Had Knoppix installed on HD for 2 years with no probs (probably because never did update or software addition)! Then read Knoppix author claiming HD install not appropriate, so looked for alternative and settled on Kanotix. Too bad - easy to install, great hdwe detection, nice desktop. BUT, too many probs - no CD automount, even in root mode, no cd autorun, media not displayed on desktop in root mode, and refusal to execute CDROM executables, even in root mode. Kaffeine player failed with library error, and system bogged down the longer it ran - something eating memory? (P4 - 2.4 Ghz, 512 Mb). Kanotix didn't seem to use 500 mb swap file I set up.
So, rather than waste more time troubleshooting (I'd rather be USING the computer) I ditched Kanotix and installed Xandros 3 (Public edition). So far, all appears well - CDROM works as it should. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Ah, that's good then - I thought you were ditching Linux forever

Hi,

Two days in Linux world is nothing. I have spent several months on Linux with various distributions and "wasted" more time like you said. But during this "waste" period, I learnt a lot of things with Linux.

Thanks,
Balaji.

i'm on Kanotix EASTER 2006... Installation was a breeze, hardware detection found all my
cards... After setting up wireless (on a laptop) and downloading my favourite app i was good to go.

the CD automounting is working in this version. I did have a problem unmounting a cd but that was only once.

My only issue at the moment:

Kanotix is slow loading applications, like Firefox and Openoffice apps. Slower than Debian
anyway. That could be because of KDE.