for installing Knoppix on the hard disk. Dont follow them! If you do,

you will install the German version of the software even though you booted

from an English version of the CD. If you follow the instructions in the

FAQ you can still convert the system to English, but to do so you have

to change the locale setting in a number of places using a German

interface.

Instead of following the installation instructions

in the FAQ, go to the Knoppix section in the menu, run the root shell

and type:

knx-hdinstall

This command invokes an easy-to-understand menu that

allows you to partition your disk. It asks you to select the hard disk

on which you would like to install the software; hda is the first IDE

hard disk and hdb is the second, while if you have SCSI hard disks its

sda and sdb. The partitioning tool, cfdisk, is fairly easy to use, but

be sure you know what you are doing before you write your partition table

to the disk or you may mess up your system and lose your existing data.

Create a swap partition size of double the amount of memory in your

machine but at least 256MB.

The installation procedure then asks you to select

your swap partition, then formats it. Next, you select your root

partition, where the procedure will install the operating system, and

the file system type.

Tip: If you select a partition type of XFS as I did,

Knoppix will not install. It will stall while coping files. A quick

search on the Knoppix forum

, which is the place to go if you run into problems, disclosed a bug

here which was suppose to be fixed. Based on my experience, it isnt --

are you reading this, Knoppix developers?

Another glitch: if you select a partition type of

EXT3, Knoppix mounts the EXT3 partition as EXT2 after installing,

because the kernel shipped with Knoppix isn\\\'t compiled with EXT3. I

selected EXT2 and was finally able to install the operating system. The

installation takes about 2GB of disk space. Knoppix booted perfectly as

a Debian system and ran much faster from the hard drive than it did from

the CD-ROM.

Filling in the missing pieces

This release is not without some flaws. The Evolution mail client is

missing. The Gaim client is an older version that didnt work with Yahoo

Messenger. And the OpenOffice version installed was German.

Since Knoppix is based on Debian, I turned to Advanced Package Tool