Experiences and trouble with Knoppix --evaluationg converting from Windows to Linux

From: jack turer (jack_turer_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 07/14/03 

Date: 14 Jul 2003 11:40:44 -0700

Re: Experiences and trouble with Knoppix --evaluationg converting from
Windows to Linux

Hello,

I am evaluating converting (at least some) desktops at the office from
Windows 2000, to some variety of Linux.

It is a 1.2Ghz AMD Athlon with 128Meg of ram, ATI Wonder Graphics card
(modern) and an 80Gig harddisk, with 100Mbps Lancard. Reasonably
modern hardware overall.

I evaluated the system, and here is my experience, and problems. Maybe
someone can help.

Generally, I liked Linux/Knoppix. I have used Linux a lot before for
servers, but never as a workstation/desktop.

Version:
Knoppix: 2003-06-06 English CD

Good: (ie. What I liked)

-CD could boot and Knoppix started
-All hardware was recognised and set up correctly. Linux has come very
far in this regard. Video, Sound, Mouse (3rd scroll button too), Lan,
CDRom, USB Drive, DVD Drive all got recognized and set up correctly by
Knoppix. Lan used DHCP to get on the network and Konquerer could see
webpages right away. FTP and ssh to other linux machines on the Lan
worked fine. Very very good so far.

Now the issues. Any ideas how to fix these?

Bad:

-The Desktop (KDE) is slow. I mean *really* slow, almost to be
unusable. Various windows (like File explorer) take forever to open.
Far slower than MS W2K on the same hardware. This may have been due to
the fact it was running from a CD though (can anyone say?)

-Csh fails: opening a Csh Shell immediately crashed with some sort of
exec error

-Xine: The Media player:
   -It is very slow to open (strange, as this is a fast PC)
   -It crashes immediately any time I try to play DIVX/XVID AVIs (just
    window closes after saying 'xine')
      -MPGs were ok though, played nicely
   -it Cannot Play DVD's : 'xine Engine Error - input plugin failed to
    open mrl 'dvd:/'
      -also crashed when trying to play VOB's from the DVD file system
       directly
   -it couldn't eject DVDs or CDs (just they get stuck 'input_DVD:
    CDROMEJECT failed: device
   -other random crashes at various time when pushing buttons on xine
   -Generally this was bad, because one use for the machine is to be a
    media playing device
   -Xine looks sexy, but very flakey. No video formats (XVID, DIVX,
    AVI, VOB) worked except MPG.

-Open Office
   -Takes forever, welcome seagulls screen opens, then crashed on open
    and windows disappeared. Couldn't evaluate...

-File Explorer, opening JPGs
   -Tried to open some JPGs, picture starts to appear in right side
    window, then file manager crashed and shut down. Couldn't see
    pictures.

-XATV (or whatever the TV card application is that is in Knoppix)
   -Started it, found my TV card (it says), but then searching
channels
    failed. Asked me if I should start anyways, I said OK. An imagine
    from my webcam appeared instead though..
    Hummm.... seems like it got very very confused. I have a webcam
and
    TV card in my PC.

-Windows Networking
   -No way (I could find) to browse the windows network (this will be
a
    reality in most offices where Linux is introduced).. ie the SMB
    windows network, that exists in most offices that run MS Windows
    LANs via 'network neighborhood'.

-USB Drive
 -Knoppix found the USB 120Gig drive, and could read it OK (NTFS). I
  decided to make it a linux filesystem, ran Fdisk (ok), rebooted
(ok),
  ran MK2FS (ran for a while, then the entire OS froze up solid,
  CTRL-ALT_DEL failed and had to pull the power and start over..)

Overall impression:
Good:
KDE looks nice. Knoppix is a great idea to introduce Linux to MS
Windows users.

Bad:
Lots of stuff doesn't work yet. Overall, Knoppix applications, though
in a controlled environment, was very unstable. Oddly, the hard stuff
(networking, DVD drive, CDRom, USB hard drive (except formatting),
graphics card, sound) all worked correctly. Kernel and OS were very
stable and worked just fine. Rather the issues were that the
applications were very flaky after the environment was started. This
would seem to be easier to fix than kernel/hardware issues (which are
OK in Knoppix).

We use the office machines for web browsing and media (AVI, audio,
images..etc) and 'Office' word processing/spread*** applications.
None of this was successful though for the reasons above, which was a
big disappointment. Are we stuck with MS-W2K I wonder..

Any thoughts on what I may have done wrong? As I said, all the hard
stuff like the graphics/audio..etc all started correctly on the PC, so
I dont think it was due to hardware that the programs kept crashing.
Funny the kernel and KDE were very stable, but the apps werent stable
at all. The CDROM is OK, passed MD5 checking, so that wasn't the
problem.

I would like to get the above to work (in Knoppix, it should really).
If I can great, I will convert over a few machines, otherwise,
probably I will need to stick to Windows 2K and check again in a
couple years to see if things have progressed a bit further.

Knoppix is a great idea BTW (once the applications work better).

Thoughts/opinions?

Thank you,

Jack