Running Knoppix

Getting Knoppix up and running on a Dell PC was easy
as pie, cake or soda. I'm not quite sure how to get
files into the system from my hard drive so I can
actually work on something and save it for later, but
I did manage to start up Open Office and the GIMP, two
applications with which I'm very, very familiar, as I
use them on Windows.

Even though Knoppix loads from CD and is able to
detect much about the hardware on which it's running,
that didn't extend to configuring network services.

I went under the "penguin" menu and finally managed to
get it working. As part of the process, I had to learn
what a "broadcast address" was -- something I've not
had to configure previously when setting up computers.

Needless to say, setting up for DHCP should be much
easier. But for those who do need to know what their
broadcast address is, I did some research, and it is
usually the regular IP address with the final set of numbers removed and .255 added in their place. Worked for me.

This page helps:

An Ethernet network is type of broadcast network. In a broadcast network any system can send information and all systems receive every message, although they discard messages that are not addressed to them. Broadcasting is accomplished via the broadcast address. This is the address to use for reaching all other addresses on a network. Any address with the host octet set to all 1's, or 255, is by default interpreted as a broadcast address. So the broadcast address is the address of the subnet, plus 255. If a hosts IP address is 129.79.149.145, its subnet address is 129.79.149 and its broadcast address would be 129.79.149.255.

I'm currently doing this post as an e-mail via Yahoo!
Mail in the Konquerer browser, the main browser/file
finder and manager for Knoppix. The disc also includes
Iceweasel, which is another name for Firefox, but for
the moment, Konquerer is working just fine.

Next: I've downloaded images of Ubuntu, and I plan to
try that as a CD-booting Linux in the near future.