[sf-lug] seeking update advice

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Jim Stockford (jim at systemateka.com):

>     I'm entertaining the idea of two OSs, Ubuntu 13.04
> and Knoppix 7.0.5; I want to get hard media for each.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but Knoppix really isn't designed
or intended to be installed and maintained thereafter.  A large part of
the reason is that (last I heard) it consists of about 85% contents
drawn from Debian-unstable, 10% cherry-picking of stuff from Mandriva,
and 5% taken from god-knows-where.  So, it all runs beautifully as a
live-CD/DVD system, but installing it risks various problems over time
going forward, thereafter.  In my experience, it doesn't maintain very
well, i.e., you get breakage that never entirely goes away.

So, for that and other reasons, I'm left wondering what you're really
trying to achieve.  Why specifically Knoppix?  Moreover, which Knoppix
variant, LXDE?  KDE 4.8?  GNOME 3.4?  Fluxbox?  Openbox?  Icewm?
evilwm?  twm?[1]  I ask because there might be a more effective way of
achieving your desired real objective -- unless the reason why you wish
to install Knoppix involves some heretofore-unstated factor resulting in
literally nothing but Knoppix sufficing.

(OTOH, if you are installing Knoppix to HD just for better read
performance than an optical disk can permit, and don't care about
long-term maintainability of the distro, then fine -- but please read
on.)


Also, have you considered something more satifactory than
dual-booting?  Like a virtual machine setup such as VirtualBox?
Many vexing problems go away if you do, and you get incidental benefits
like concurrent use of multiple OSes rather than needing to shut down
everything to switch between them.

Again, the real question is:  What problem are you _really_ trying to
solve?


> * Are these releases okay or good? (Should I get older
>   releases or wait for an upcoming release?)

Knoppix 7.0.5 is very reliable as a live CD.  I typically boot Knoppix
into LXDE (default) or Openbox, so your mileage may differ if you prefer
one of the bloatware desktop environments.

Obviously _nobody_ can tell you what Ubuntu 13.04 release code will be,
since it doesn't yet exist, only development code.

> * What are your recommendations for getting each distro
>   on physical media (CD or DVD or USB stick)? I don't
>   like downloading ISOs--my experience includes problems,
>   primarily with corrupt images. I like paying money to
>   support the development communities.

Are you asking whether someone is selling Knoppix media?  If so, they're
linked right from the front page of the Knoppix site.
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-vendors/index-en.php

However, as others have observed, y'know, you really need to download
either the accompanying *.sha1 or the accompanying *.md5 file in the
same directory (http://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix-dvd/ and such)
and run /usr/bin/md5sum or /usr/bin/sha1sum against your downloaded
file, to verify it arrived correctly.

For that matter, what _software_ are you using to download ISOs?  Not a
Web browser, I hope.  If so, open a shell and do 'wget -c [URL]' using
the URL copied to Clipboard from your Web browser.  The '-c' is the
'continue' flag that permits you to resume a partial/aborted download 
automagically by running the command again.

> * For previous Ubuntu releases I have added packages for
>   word processors, graphics, and other applications.

Much omitted.  I'm not 100% sure what your final question is, but my
guess is it's 'What's the best way to install applications into a
subtree that can be shared and useful between multiple differing Linux
distributions.'

If so:  Don't try to do that.  It really doesn't work.  As others have
said, even a shared /home directory can bite you in the ass with,
particularly, dotfile directories/files relied on by GNOME, KDE, and
Firefox if there is version skew between the distros, which there almost
always is.