7 replies to this topic

[DarkLordofthePenguins]

I have Knoppix, which I'm running from a live CD. It's the only Linux distro I've ever tried. I like it, partly because of all of the applications it comes with, partly because it's so customizable, but I also have some problems with it. Some animation doesn't work, namely full-screen and 3D animation. I have no problem with some applications, namely some screensavers, SuperTux, and a few others, and Flash works fine, but a lot of it is just really crappy. Some of the screensavers have really slow framerates so they are not smooth, and 3D games like Armagetron and Vega Strike have poor response time, even when not in full-screen mode.

Another thing I've found is that KDE doesn't work real well, though this probably has more to do with the fact that it's a live distro than anything else. Whenever I boot into KDE, it slows the whole system down.

So I'm wondering, are these pervasive problems in Linux? Or is it just something to do with Knoppix and the fact that I'm running it from a CD? Could I fix this problem by getting a mainstream distro like Ubuntu or Lenny?

[WingedPanther]

One issue with a LiveCD is you probably aren't running the native drivers for your video card. OpenGL will end up making the CPU do all the work instead of the GPU in cases like that, which gives poor performance. I play OpenArena and Nexuiz on Ubuntu with pretty good framerates.

[Milyardo]

Since Knoppix does not ship with many graphics drivers due to licensing restrictions you must manually install those graphics drivers into memory every time you want to start up the live CD.

If you prefer to keep using a live CD, you could make your own, or possibly(If your BIOS supports it) create a bootable USB Flash drive, so that your portable linux installation can have some persistence.

For more information on creating a live USB stick try looking on the unetbootin project site at UNetbootin - Homepage and Downloads

[DarkLordofthePenguins]

Thanks for the information. Maybe I should try a non-live distro. I could install Knoppix to the hard drive, but I've heard that Knoppix on the hard drive has problems with networking and such, plus I don't want to overwrite Windows. There's an option somewhere for copying Knoppix to a USB drive, so I could probably do that pretty easily, but I have no experience working with drivers and have no idea how to add them.

[DarkLordofthePenguins]

Indeed, I started a 3D game with the system monitor running and the CPU usage for both processors jumped from about 20% to about 85%. I really should get a hard-drive distro; I'm thinking of getting Debian, since it's a lot like Knoppix. I'm just afraid of partitioning my hard drive. What if I do something wrong and mess everything up? And will I have to compile the kernel from source, like I had to do with some Unix apps I downloaded to my Mac, all with no success?

[Alexander]

The only way you can mess up your NTFS partition is by moving it to another sector, which is only needed in rare occasions. You can download a simple liveCD partitioning distribution such as Gparted (USB/CD iso/PXE available), shrink free space of your NTFS drive* by 10GBs or as desired , and create an empty EXT3/4 partition (physically after your NTFS one), swap is not required for general use so no need to worry about that.

You won't need to recompile Debian's kernel from source unless you're wanting to do some crazy security patching or try another kernel for hardware compatibility reasons, only the kernel headers for certain packages are needed separate. There's a nice x86 installation guide right here for Debian*, I'd recommend a good browse through it.

As LiveCD's as you mentioned in your first post run RAM disks and use a read-only FS, you're not going to get much milage out of it. Live distros are purely for sampling, or recovery/temprorary work, they simply weren't meant to play games or do dev work. A permanent installation is the next step for your Linux experience.

*Note 1: Touching the NTFS partition will cause Windows to force a chkdisk after the boot logo next startup, this is Windows' protection kicking in, just let it fully run and then Windows will commit the changes (new size etc.) to heart.

*Note 2: Ensure there's info about GRUB in there, or look for a guide of installing GRUB with Debian. If your Windows partition isn't in the boot menu, don't worry, it's most likely in root (hd1,1) , not too hard to fiddle with to make sure the menu list works. the ,1 is partition one, so you need to fiddle with the GRUB entry to make sure it's Windows.

[Milyardo]

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The only way you can mess up your NTFS partition is by moving it to another sector, which is only needed in rare occasions.

This sentence is pure nonsense.

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You can download a simple liveCD partitioning distribution such as Gparted (USB/CD iso/PXE available), shrink free space of your NTFS drive* by 10GBs or as desired , and create an empty EXT3/4 partition (physically after your NTFS one), swap is not required for general use so no need to worry about that.

No need to download a seperate live CD for GParted, GParted is already installed on the Debian Live Installation CD. Also running without a dedicated swap partition is still unrecommended.

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Touching the NTFS partition will cause Windows to force a chkdisk after the boot logo next startup, this is Windows' protection kicking in, just let it fully run and then Windows will commit the changes (new size etc.) to heart.

This is just semantics, but parted flags the partition to be checked by chkdisk, Windows doesn't automatically know to check it.

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Ensure there's info about GRUB in there, or look for a guide of installing GRUB with Debian. If your Windows partition isn't in the boot menu, don't worry, it's most likely in root (hd1,1) , not too hard to fiddle with to make sure the menu list works. the ,1 is partition one, so you need to fiddle with the GRUB entry to make sure it's Windows.

Debian installs GRUB for you, there is no need specifically install it afterwards.

[Alexander]

@Milyardo, I was referring that shrinking a partition on even a fragmented disk is relatively safe, but moving the partition on a fragmented disk is extremely dangerous. This is why I thought I'd mention.