Knoppix, the Computer User's Friend

Jack's here, bored, waiting for some HUGE mailboxes on some Microsoft Exchange servers to move from one location in Kansas to here in Ohio. It's all coming across a T1 line. I need to have multiple Remote Desktop windows open to make sure things are going smoothly, and unfortunately, Remote Desktop Connection for the Mac only allows one RDC window to be open at a time. No matter, I have my trusty Netlux Notebook Computer I've mentioned before.

That was until the dreaded hard drive failure I've been talking about happened to me.

So earlier today I was wondering how I'd get the job done without going crazy logging in and out. Standing in front of a 19" rack in the server room for hours wasn't my idea of fun.

So what to do? Easy. Hard Drive failure won't stop Jack. I just whip out my trusty Knoppix 3.4 CD-ROM, boot it up on the Netlux, and instant Linux operating system complete with X-Windows, sound, network, and all the goodies you need. In fact I am listening to a Shoutcast stream on Port 80 (Firewalls are annoying, don'tcha know), typing this post, and have 3 RDC screens open (one to home for MSN Messenger, see previous content between parenthesis).

Jack uses Knoppix for many of his Computer Forensics' applications. You can boot into console mode, skipping the pretty X-Windows, which sometimes just gets in the way, and use dd, dd_rescue, md5sum, and other tools that are already compressed and waiting on the Knoppix disk. Amazing that you can get 2 GB of data onto a little 700MB disk, and have it all work.

Cheers to Knoppix!

UPDATE: You can also get Knoppix info at www.knoppix.net.