Michigan web site - Chapter 11 . Running KNOPPIX 335 . Your
Chapter 11 . Running KNOPPIX 335 . Your own, portable operating system You don t have to carry around a laptop or whole PC to make sure you have the software you need. Instead, you can use any PC that is available (with the exception of some unsupported hardware) and boot your whole computing environment with a single CD or floppy. By customizing your own KNOPPIX, you can add your own data and pick and choose applications as well. . A tool for managing data on any PC You can bypass the operating system and other software on any computer and use the applications on your KNOPPIX disk to manage the data on that computer. Of course, these concepts are not exclusive to KNOPPIX because you could conceptually do the same thing with any boot floppy since the days of DOS (as well as any other bootable Linux). The difference is that KNOPPIX does those things so well. It lets you take over a computer, not just with a tiny rescue disk capable of running a few obtuse commands, but with at full-scale desktop, server, and administrative tool kit operating system. With that in mind, here are some ways people are using KNOPPIX: . Showing off Linux A demo can lack some punch when you have to spend an hour installing before you can make your point. With KNOPPIX, it can take about five minutes from the time you tell your friend about Linux to the time you have a complete desktop system running on his PC. And in the process, you don t have to worry about harming anything on his computer because you don t even need to touch his hard disk. . Testing a computer for Linux Instead of getting halfway through an install to see if your PC is capable of running Linux, you can boot KNOPPIX. If it works, you can check to see what drivers were loaded to deal with your hardware (type lsmod from a shell) and then go ahead and install any Linux you like to the hard disk. . Rescuing a computer or network Many tools for tracking down and fixing problems on both Linux and Windows systems are included in KNOPPIX. There is also a Knoppix-STD edition that includes dozens more tools for rescuing broken systems and tracing network problems (see www.knoppix-std.org). . Taking over a broken server If a Web server, file server, or firewall has been hacked or otherwise broken, you might be able to use KNOPPIX to safely server the data from a KNOPPIX boot disk while you fix the problem. . Doing anything you want For those of us who have gotten used to using Linux, it s a pain to go somewhere and have to do work or make a presentation on a computer that doesn t have the tools you need. By bringing the whole operating system, all your software tools and sometimes even your data (with a customized CD, separate floppy, or downloaded files), your computing environment can be the same wherever you go. Now that you have some idea of what to do with KNOPPIX, let s get started.
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