In spite of work, Cricket World Cup, I found time to test Knoppix 6.4 CD/DVD and both are equally good and can be installed into the hard disk.
In the past after various tricks I managed to install Knoppix in a FAT partition of my laptop.
Since I have number of distributions in all my computers getting any new distribution installed is a bit of a hassle.No wonder the developers cannot keep pace with my finicky behaviour.
This is equally true when I have two hard disks.
I am yet to find a distribution except perhaps Debian which can detect multiple distributions in the same computer and the correct boot record.
Each distribution has its own way to figure out and configure the boot record. Distribution counts hard disks a and b , c for hard disks and in one distribution a become b and b become a and another a is a and b is b at boot time.
This is confusing for me and I have to figure out how to sort it and edit boot message. I do not like this happening.
If you have no distribution in your hard disk the installation is straight forward but my installation are very complicated since I have to figure out how the distribution configure thing and sometime try trial an error method.
I never give up but after many trials I get the distributions to behave in the way I want them to be.
New Knoppix was no different I had several failures but finally I got it in my hard disk cohabiting with various other distributions this time in a native Linux partition not FAT.
It is derivative of Debian squeeze and is pretty good.
Who says Debain is bad.
It has no administrative constrains, like Puppy can do anything without root permission sometimes with superuser status. Please do not get angry with me these are Linux vocabulary.
So be careful (it gives a brief warning every time it does something drastic).
It needs a swap partition and at least one reiserfs partition (big enough to accommodate the wast resources it has). Small partition for CD but a very big one for the DVD.
It need at least 1 GiB swap in the first partition, but I gave 2 instead.
It's partition tool Gparted sometime find it difficult to partition the hard disk.
So I booted Debian's Gparted and did the changes and booted Knoppix.
Its actions are almost automatic and instantaneous and moment you press ENTER it gets down to work so if you have data in your hard disk please take special care.
It's compiz is excellent and I will install it in every one of my computers when they are undergoing major changes. I went down for a cup of tea and when I returned the monitor was going berserk with scintillating graphic and thought the graphic card has gone. Not so its graphics are pretty good.
It has lot of games too.
Pingus is excellent. I kept playing it while it was being installed which one can never can do when windows are being installed.
