Knoppix 5 misinformation

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

Have just finished burning the Knoppix 5.01 LiveCD.

I was particularly curious because the system requirements posted at
the main page of Knoppix.com still say you can run this distro with:

a 486 cpu
32MB of RAM
and a standard NON-Bootable CD-ROM drive

Now, when I open the intro page on the live CD, and click on the EN
tab, I see the last of these three lines has been dropped for Ver. 5.,
and a BOOTABLE CD-ROM drive is now required.

So, how meaningful is the cpu and RAM requirement? Is there actually
such a thing as a 486-based PC WITH a Bootable CD-ROM drive?

In fact, I asked Klaus Knopper this by e-mail more than two years ago,
and he answered at that time that he didn't know.

Not very confidence building....

 

[John Jay Smith]

there are other more "lite" versions of linux for older machines....

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

there are other more "lite" versions of linux for older machines....

Are there? Or are their claims just more misinformation?

I've been looking for a way to run a LiveCD via a PCMCIA_SCSI CD-ROM
drive (for a laptop without a CD-ROM) for some years now. In fact, I
had correspondence with Knopper about it several years ago too. And he
replied that all it required was a boot floppy with pcmcia support in
the initial bootup module.

This is NOT because I'm a masochist, BTW, but rather because I've
learned the hard way that posted system requirements and hardware
compatibilities for Linux distros are completely unreliable. And
having wasted several days at a time in the past in futile attempts to
install Linux on a laptop, I've become a bit gunshy.

Have been shaking the bushes for such a floppy boot image ever since,
without any result. CAn't gt any intrepid Linux programmers to write
one either. On the contrary, Knopper has stopped including a floppy
boot image with his distributions altogether, and most of the johnny
come latelys have never even thought of such a thing.

In any case, I believe you missed my point entirely.

 

[arachnid]

there are other more "lite" versions of linux for older machines....

For some strange reason, nothing involving Linux ever seems to go right
for Achim. It has been thus forever:

<http://groups.google.com/groups?as_...981&as_maxd=1&as_maxm=8&as_maxy=2006&safe=off>

 

[John Jay Smith]

So its achims fault or linux? lol

dont be too hasty to answer that!

 

[arachnid]

So its achims fault or linux? lol

It's the fault of those few fanatics who are eternally promising more than
Linux can currently deliver, thus luring innocent users to their doom. /

dont be too hasty to answer that!

I've been a few rounds with Achim before. He's one of those people who
loves to be wronged so he can gripe about it. Give him a bleeding-edge
distro and he'll complain that it's unstable. Give him a solid enterprise
disto and he'll complain that the applications aren't bleeding-edge. And
either way, it's always the developers' fault.

 

[SueDoeCyAnts]

Have just finished burning the Knoppix 5.01 LiveCD.

I was particularly curious because the system requirements
posted at the main page of Knoppix.com still say you can run
this distro with:

a 486 cpu
32MB of RAM
and a standard NON-Bootable CD-ROM drive

Now, when I open the intro page on the live CD, and click on the
EN tab, I see the last of these three lines has been dropped for
Ver. 5., and a BOOTABLE CD-ROM drive is now required.

So, how meaningful is the cpu and RAM requirement? Is there
actually such a thing as a 486-based PC WITH a Bootable CD-ROM
drive?

I had one, that had a bios option to boot from cd.
It was a 486sx chip running WIN?3.11 for workgroups.
Can't recall ever actually attmepting to boot from cd though.
Haven't a clue about the MoBo or bios either.
it was ma nany boxes ago. I remember the bios option,
because it was the firt place i'd ever heard of it.

Win 3.11 and the underlying MSDOS 6.22 both
used floppy clean/upgrade loadds,
and floppy recoveries

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

On Wed, 02 Aug 2006 22:04:06 -0500, arachnid

....

I've been a few rounds with Achim before. He's one of those people who
loves to be wronged so he can gripe about it. Give him a bleeding-edge
distro and he'll complain that it's unstable.

That's rich, considering I've never had a PC less than four years old.

I don't know with whom you went those "rounds" , but they must have
knocked you witless.

Give him a solid enterprise
disto and he'll complain that the applications aren't bleeding-edge.

Let's see your source for this claim. Its complete hooey by my
recollection.

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

I had one, that had a bios option to boot from cd.
It was a 486sx chip running WIN?3.11 for workgroups.
Can't recall ever actually attmepting to boot from cd though.
Haven't a clue about the MoBo or bios either.
it was ma nany boxes ago. I remember the bios option,
because it was the firt place i'd ever heard of it.

Win 3.11 and the underlying MSDOS 6.22 both
used floppy clean/upgrade loadds,
and floppy recoveries

Interesting. I guess that machine was top of the line when it came
out. Still, I don't think it lets Knopper off the hook.

The difference between the description of sys requirements on the
Knoppix home page and that on the downloaded LiveCD shows that they
simply didn't (don't) care enough to keep their documentation up to
date (and that's the charitable interpretation).

 

[arachnid]

...

That's rich, considering I've never had a PC less than four years old.

You've been trying to make Linux work for six years, and you *still* don't
know the difference between a computer and a distro? It's no wonder you
can't get it to work!!!

I don't know with whom you went those "rounds" , but they must have
knocked you witless.

LOL! You should talk.

http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/linux-kernel-cost.html shows that the Linux
2.6 kernel is approximately 4,287,449 lines of source code. The
development effort estimate is 1,302 person-years. In other words, it
would take 130 programmers working full-time for 10 years to write the
Linux kernel. And note that the kernel has to run on hardware that was
designed specifically for Windows rather than Linux, that the hardware
specifications are frequently kept secret by the hardware companies, that
hardware is often designed to foil reverse-engineering, and that its
firmware is undergoing constant undocumented changes.

Then there are the applications. All 15,000 applications in my open-source
repository total out to about 400,000,000 lines of source code, or 121,284
person-years, or 12,128 programmers working for 10 years

One does indeed have to be witless to expect and even *demand* that stupid
mistakes shouldn't exist in 404,287,449 lines of code and documentation
that took 13,430 programmers 10 years to write and that's running on a
multitude of undocumented hardware hostile to the OS. *Normal* people soon
come to understand that problems are inevitable and work around them when
they happen. Obsessing on these kinds of problems to the point that you
can't achieve your goals is not healthy.

Note that I'm not saying Linux and open-source couldn't stand improvement.
They could stand a *lot* of improvement. There are a lot of "features" and
ways of doing things that I despise, software problems abound, hardware
support can be problematic at times, and the documentation absolutely
sucks. Yet, none of this stops myself or millions of others from
successfully using and even enjoying Linux. We find ways to work around
these problems and move on, whereas you come to a screeching halt and go
waste your time griping about it all over Usenet.

For all these insurmountable problems you keep encountering, Linux has
been chosen for the OLPC project which ultimately will have nearly a
hundred million children in developing nations running the same Linux that
you just can't seem to learn to use.

Let's see your source for this claim. Its complete hooey by my
recollection.

The URL I provided earlier contains plenty of links to your endless petty
griping.

 

[Richard Steven Hack]

I haven't posted here in a couple years now - but I remember Achim.

He's STILL trying to get that goddamn SCSI CD-ROM to work! He was doing
that TWO YEARS AGO!

THROW THE ****ING THING OUT!

MOVE ON, ALREADY!