Knoppix is one of the best known (if not best outright) bootable CD Linux distributions. You put the CD in the drive and you have a running Linux workstation complete with many useful administrative and security tools. O’Reilly’s Knoppix: Pocket Reference brings the many options and tools that comes with Knoppix and puts it a small book. It’s well-written, concise, and complete. It's roughly 70 pages of highly compact information on the various cheat codes (boot settings), security uses (such as cleaning virus infected machines offline), and Knoppix specific tools like Live Installing and persistent settings across boots.
This reference is essential for any beginners to Knoppix or for advanced users who are looking for the right set of options to get what they want out of the system. It’s an invaluable desk-side companion.
Article comments
1 - Bennett
What? On what platforms does this work? How much does it cost? What does it do to the windows system already on my computer?
Why would I want to buy it?
2 - Victor Plenty
It doesn't do anything to the Windows OS on your computer. That's the beauty of these bootable CD versions of Linux. You get to try out the Linux experience with no risk, by booting from the CD. If you don't like it, just restart your computer with the CD out of the drive, and you're back to running Windows again.
If you have your own CD burner, you can download a Linux CD image file for free from many different places on the Web. One good site to find multiple flavors of Linux is LinuxISO.org.
Knoppix will work on almost any computer capable of running Windows and booting from the CD-ROM drive.
3 - Bennett
Thanks Victor! This review is kinda paltry in not providing this kind of info to those of us who are not "unixwizards" or such.
4 - Gregg Guetschow
One of the real advantages of the Knoppix Live CD is the ability to use it to detect problems in a computer running Windows. Just by way of example, I was having problems with my wife's laptop and, by using Knoppix, was able to isolate the cause. Current Knoppix releases will start up from a firewire cd-rom, something that many others will not do.
5 - Pat Cummings
I have changed the category of this post from "Review" to "Opinion." John, your re-posting of this item without substantial change after your editor (moi) asked you to expand it is not appreciated.