Knoppix

So in a previous post I discussed Linux and the general philosophy in my mind that I use to judge it.  I thought that perhaps I was too hard on Linux and I wanted to take the opportunity to say that it's not all that bad.  Linux was the first Operating System that I cam across that had the ability to run on a system without installing itself and without making any changes to it, this behaviour is called "Live" mode and is achieved using a Live CD - a CD that you boot your computer with thus loading Linux rather than whatever Operating System you have installed [or indeed none at all].

Knoppix is a Debian based Linux Distribution [similar to Ubuntu] and it remains one of my favourite distributions - a  serious contender for first place in fact - the reason I love Knoppix is because it negates many of the criticisms I have made of Linux in other posts - namely that it is incredibly hard to break.  Owing to the fact that you boot it from a CD and that you can run it without making any changes to your computer at all, you are guaranteed a 'fresh', 'clean' boot each time you run it.  If anything goes wrong, just reboot and all default settings are loaded.

Knoppix is also an excellent tool for using in environments where you may want to have an unrestricted Operating System where the host PC is restricted - e.g. in a workplace or a school which normally has a network that is pretty much locked down, you can simply boot the Live CD and use Knoppix to your heart's content with all OS features at your disposal and often applications that you would not of had access to - however worth note, owing to the way many networks are administrated when boot in this way you are usually 'offline' and have no internet access.  Beside that fact the Knoppix remains incredibly useful.

One of the main uses I have for Knoppix is usually data recovery.  Owing again to that fact that it makes no changes to the system itself it can be invaluable for retrieving files from a hard disk of say a corrupted Windows install allowing you to back them up before reinstalling the system.  I have actually had to use Knoppix before to retrieve an ISO file from the hard disk to burn to a CD so that I could reinstall my OS.

The best thing of all is that Knoppix is free and available for download from the official Knoppix site.
http://www.knoppix.com/