Linux

Ask something
Discussion Locked

What is this...

0 helpful
5 replies

by azul 1 view

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

I decided to try Linux, I went to DistroWatch.com Linuxiso.org and others to download Knoppix and find either broken links or a long list of links to files that I don't know what to do with. There are ISO's, txt files and others.
Do I dowload all these files and then burn them to a cd?
Do I need these files?
Is there no single ISO that I can just download and burn?

5 replies

by charliespencer

I did this just yesterday afternoon. Some of what I'm going to tell you may repeat what you've already done, but I'm going to include everything in case some other newbie wants to try this.

At the top of the Distrowatch page is a pull-down box to select a distro. Selecting Knoppix (or any other distribution) takes you to a page with more info about that distro. Somewhere on that table of information is a link titled "Download Mirrors".

When you click it, you'll go to a page with a laundry list of sites you can download from. Pick one; most people pick a site near them. In my case I picked the Purdue HTML site.

Based on your original posting, I suspect you got this far and got overwhelmed by the options. Most of the Linux crowd at TR think lots of choices are good, but as a newbie I find too many options is intimidating. Here's a quick breakdown on the options on the Purdue site; if you select others, your mileage may vary.

You're interested in the big files (695 megabytes or so) that end in .ISO. Think of a .ISO file as the CD version of a .ZIP file. You'll need CD burning software to turn the .ISO image into a usable CD; more on that later. Most of those 1kb files with the unfamiliar extensions are used to verify that your downloaded .ISO file is complete and uncorrupted. I'll leave the instructions on those to someone who knows how to use them. They aren't mandatory or required.

If you look at the names of the .ISO files, you'll notice they have several things in common. They all include a version number (V3.8.2, V4.0.2, etc), the date the .ISO file was created, and two uppercase letters (-EN and -DE). I believe Knoppix is originally a German distro, and the -DE version is in DEutch. The -EN ENglish versions are the ones you want. Most people pick the newest versions of something (unless it's labeled BETA), so you'd want:

KNOPPIX V4.0.2CD-2005-09-23-EN.ISO

along with the KNOPPIX-FAQ-EN.txt, which is the ENglish Frequently Asked Questions file.
If you've only got a dial-up connection, be prepared for the download to take the better part of a day; my T1 at work took a couple of hours.

Once you've got it stored locally, just double-click the .ISO file. If your CD burning software isn't over five years old, it will start and ask you to feed it a blank CD. When the burn finishes, leave the CD in the drive, reboot, and Knoppix should start up.

Wait a while before you try this so some of the resident fish-eating, egg-laying, ice flow hoppers have the chance to point out all my mistakes.

by stress junkie

I've downloaded and burned ISO images many times. Your instructions are excellent. I would only add that you need to use the 680 MB CD-R(W) disks. DON'T buy the 650 MB disks.

Penquin Bill

by azul

...resident fish-eating, egg-laying, ice flow hoppers have...

That is to funny. Everyone in my office had a good laugh over that.

by prefbid ii

I just happened to have done this on my machine as you were writing these posts. I did run into a minor problem that you cover, but don't give enough options.

Burning an ISO to a CD. There are lots of different instructions on the best way to do this and most of them assume you know what they are talking about. If you have a modestly old Linux -- or if someone set it up with a different option, when you double click the ISO file, you may get the file manager pointing to directory "///burn". If that happens, do something else. ///burn is not a good way to go unless you know where they hid the image creation tools.

A better manual solution is to use K3b and choose from the drop down.

by draguslave

Did you try the main site: knoppix.org? They list a bunch of mirror sites.

Look for the one with the latest date, I saw a 4.02 version with a date of 9/24/05, 711124KB big.

That's what you want to download and burn. I believe most Linux distros will be 1 or 2 CD sets. The first is the main install CD with the second containing extra packages/kernels/stuff.

The files with .asc/.md5 have the checksums for the .iso image. It's a way to check that your downloaded copy didn't get corrupt. You'll have to use a program such as md5sum to calculate it once you've downloaded it to your PC.

That's about it. Make sure you burn it correctly unto a CD. You don't want to end up with a copy of
the file on a CD but have to use whatever feature of your burner software to make a proper ISO image onto the CD; LinuxISO has good instructions on that.

Hope this helps.

This discussion is closed to new replies.