Additional Information Links Will KNOPPIX work with my existing file format? Version 1.5 and later of KNOPPIX can use an existing DOS partition for its Linux swap data (command mkdosswapfile or in the KDE menus under "Knoppix"). This also allows one to work with less RAM. The swap data knoppix.swp on this partition can be erased later to free up space for other things. How is KNOPPIX started? To start the CD, set up the BIOS of your computer to boot off the CD, put the CD in the drive, and power up the computer. If your computer doesn't support this option, you have to use a boot disk (floppy). You can create this disk from the image in KNOPPIX/boot.img on the CD. Where can one get the KNOPPIX-CD and how much does it cost? Approximately $2.99 US plus shipping, or more (varies). Official KNOPPIX download page (700 meg ISO file)
 Dragon Linux :
For those who want something more elaborate than a mini-install that will use their existing DOS/Windows FAT file system there is Dragon Linux. DragonLinux is a Linux distribution which runs on top of windows with no partitioning needed as long as the Windows OS is sitting on a FAT32 partition. DragonLinux is fully supported on Windows ME, W98, and W95. Work for support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP using NTFS is in the works. DragonLinux is a UMSDOS distribution, compared to a Loopback filesystem of vr2r1... That change was made to eliminate the 2GB disk space boundary with the previous version, and to simplify installation and expansion (ie the file system grows as needed). The Full Version is a fully loaded version with GNome and several other smaller window managers, and the full line of tools for GNome. The lite version is a full console version with everything from the full version excluding the X environment, therefore being able to be run on older machines. The 'lite' version of DragonLinux does not require an extremely powerful system to run on. Recommended system requirements : 486 or Pentium class CPU; 8MB RAM for console, 32-64MB for X-Windows; A (older versions? FAT16 or) FAT32 partition with 50-130 megabytes of hard disk space free for minimal install (48meg download). DragonLinux is fully compatible with Slackware 10.0 packages, and contains limited support for RPM packages. The 'full' version of DragonLinux is closer to a 300meg download with corresponding increase in the installed size on your hard drive (700MB)..
 Oralux :
Based on Knoppix 3.3 (2003-09-24). Oralux hopes to facilitate access to GNU/Linux for the vision impaired people lowering the barrier to install the software. Oralux is a 528MB Knoppix customization, the self-installing distro created by Klaus Knopper. Knoppix includes, on a single CD, nearly three compressed CDs of data. Oralux inherits, thanks to Knoppix, a number of braille drivers. The audio environment :
The Oralux user interface is based on Emacspeak the Audio Desktop created by T. V. Raman. Emacspeak offers a complete and powerful desktop. The CD includes a free english Text-To-Speech software (TTS) application: Flite (Carnegie Mellon University). It includes EFM from Pierre Lorenzon for the French and English languages. EFM is based on Festival (University of Edinburgh) and MBROLA (Thierry Dutoit, Universite de Mons). Oralux may install the DECtalk software, a multi language TTS from the Fonix company. This TTS allows Oralux access to the following languages: English or Castillan Spanish, French, and German. Two new voice synthesizers have been added: ParleMax (in French) and Multispeech/Ru_tts (in Russian and English). Thank you to Hugh Sasse for bringing this to my attention.
A Performance Tweak for All Linux File Systems
Linux records an atime, or access time, whenever a file is read. However, access time isn't very useful, and can be quite costly in processor cycles to track. To get a quick performance boost on any kind of Linux file system, simply disable access time updates with the mount option noatime. For example, to disable access times on a JFS partition, do something like this in /etc/fstab: /dev/hda6 /jfs jfs noatime 1 2
Enjoy! Charles.Angelich
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