Knoppix is an excellent distribution but it should be pointed out that the newer versions of it are optimized specifically to run on newer hardware. It doesn’t require anything extraordinary, but older computers that you’re thinking of fixing up with Linux should be given Fedora, Slackware, or even better DSL.

I tried Knoppix 3.8.2 this morning on a system with a 500MHZ CPU and 128MB mem. The video card was not ancient but it wasn’t anything fancy either. It took Knoppix over an hour to finally tell me that it couldn’t find an X-server that would work. It was comical to watch it click and whir for twenty minutes at a time attempting to get some configuration to function. I’ve used several other LiveCDs on the same machine (I’ve even watched anime on it thanks to Dynebolic), so I know the hardware can support Linux.

Knoppix is an amazing OS, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not your first choice for old hardware.

At Gary’s motioning I tried out Dynebolic today. It’s a LiveCD that focuses entirely on multimedia tasks. It’s highly competent at playing, recording, mixing, and other tasks with both audio and video - even on crappy hardware. Read my whole review/distro check of this multimedia Linux distribution.

I don’t know where I came up with the term ‘distro-jockey’ but I think it describes many of us pretty well. This site is focused on distributions of Linux as the entrypoint for new users of Linux. Well, it’s also focused on how cool it is to install Linux on things so perhaps the scope is a little broad.

In keeping with the desire to explore Linux installations there are two new Distro Checks available today. I had the day off of work so I described my experience with two totally new distros (new to me that is):

• Ubuntu 5.04 LiveCD
• NetBSD 2.0 Live

They are both LiveCD’s so I was able to do them without any re-partitioning or anything complicated. It was mostly a test to see if they would run out of the box and be competent at handling hardware and doing basic productivity things. I’m sad to report that neither one was of any use for playing songs and movies, but hopefully I’ll come across a LiveCD that can do that soon.

A week ago I spent the weekend installing Gentoo Linux on my Dell 600m laptop. I had decided on a stage 3 (the easiest of 3) install from a Universal LiveCD and I documented the whole procedure. I figure it’ll be useful for other’s who try to do it to know some of what I went through. I know I could have used some help by people describing what glitches they ran into along the way.

So here it is: The Gentoo Stage 3 Install

There is an excellent tutorial for installing multiple Linux distros on a single hard drive over at Shell Shocked.org. I ran into some problems with my installation of Gentoo (an upcoming article for the Distro Installs category) and this page really helped me out.

I was mostly looking for details on editing the bootloader configuration file (I use LILO, so I needed help with /etc/lilo.conf), but this page is golden for anyone who’s power-happy.

Holly Bostick is an excellent writer and an OS guru. In her article she gives clear instructions on how to install many different versions of Linux and multiple versions of Windows all on the same hard drive - all while conserving space.

Tutorial: Multiple Linux Distros by Holly Bostick

Here’s an old idea: Instead of risking an installation of Linux on your computer and potentially getting a messed up MBR (or worse), just use VMWare and install Linux right on top of Windows. While it’s an old idea it’s unceasingly brilliant and Mark at A Unix and Oracle Weblog has done just that with both Fedora Core 3 with Oracle 10g on VMware.

I’ve got Fedora Core 3 running under VMWare on my XP laptop! The install went smoothly and up2date went out and updated all my packages.

Congratulations Mark. Now hopefully you’ll be able to migrate that VMware installation to a bootable OS as well.

Yippee! We’ve got ourselves a real live report on a Linux installation. I love these because a person describing the installation process of a new distro of Linux helps everyone else in the world to prepare for when they take the leap.

Ubuntu is the subject of today’s installation, recorded at mrburnz.org. The author (Mr. Burnz I can only assume) reports:

I have to say I am impressed out how quick and painless it was–definitely the smoothest linux install I’ve done. The only device I will have to set up manually is my wireless card.

Five days later there is a post describing how even the wireless card was automatically prepared:

Turns out Ubuntu did detect my Atheros 802.11 a/b/g card during the install and set up the madwifi drivers. Wow. It is easily the best and simplest installer to date.

If anyone else has installed Ubuntu (or any other distro that was new to them), let me know about it. If you’d like to post the process as an article on Linux is Hard you’ll get full credit and linkbacks.

Mrs. Devnet is running an experiment on a new distro. She’s doing what I hope all of us Linux writers do more of: mess up our systems with new versions of Linux and share the story. Excerpted from Mrs. Devnet’s experiment is the following description of her initial reaction to PC LinuxOS 8.1:

I’m not going to say much at this point besides the fact that the look and feel is so far the best of the distros I have tested. The real kicker was finding Limewire for Linux in my menu and ready to go. I must say, I sure could have used a pair of “Oops, I Crapped My Pants!” when I saw how much cooler this file sharing program was compared to anything I’ve ever used.

I’ll be following this as often as she writes about it, so stay tuned if you want to hear about this distro.