[NBLUG/talk] Laptop Distro

[Jeremy Turner]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2004 at 11:56:22AM -0800, Steve Johnson wrote:
> Hmm, I was just thinking, what about the knoppix HD installer?  Has
> anyone installed this on a laptop?  I know right from the knoppix CD,
> everything 'just works'.. Seem's that would be the easiest thing to
> try..
> 
> What about updates on knoppix, since its debian based, is it as simple
> as 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade'?

*debian-based* is a good way to describe it.  There are some packages
that are not debian standard packages, so you'd probably want to remove
them and replace them with the standard ones on a HD install.  If I used
Knoppix to install debian, I would look at the "How to Install Debian
onto a Remote System."  The instructions work pretty much the same.  You
manually cfdisk to partition, run mkfs.ext3 -J to create your
filesystem, mount it, then basically run debootstrap, which grabs the
debian packages from your mirror and installs them on your new
partition.  You do need to manually copy a few files over like
/etc/hosts and /etc/hostname and /etc/resolv.conf.

I just reinstalled my desktop a few days ago with the netinst kernel and
initrd.gz on my USB key.  The new debian-installer isn't so bad.

I played with SuSE 9.1 a month or so ago.  I must admin it was very
nice.  I worry about packages breaking during a major upgrade.  I find
debian's process of upgrading goes fairly smoothly.  Atleat for me.

Jeremy