* Kanotix slowfire-nightly-eeepc4G, on an eeePC 4G with 2GiB RAM
I'll try to be as objective as possible and not slate Kanotix with a bad score purely on my experimental experience with this particular version, as Kanotix is an excellent project, and its other versions do work well.
Because I wanted to have a persistent live USB version, I installed to a USB flashdrive via "sudo dd if=/path/to/iso of=/dev/sdx bs=1M", which worked as should be expected; and it booted without problem, albeit very slowly.
And Kanotix successfully installed, via the the user-friendly Acritoinstaller, leaving about 512MiB free, which is quite remarkable for a Debian 12 based distro.
However, it is clearly not suited to the eeePC 4G (Surf?), for several reasons.
Firstly, Compiz gets in the way and slows everything down. Why put compiz in a release for such an old machine?
The website does mention booting using the 'nocompiz' cheatcode, but Compiz with LXDE makes no sense to me.
It can also be booted with a 'toram' cheatcode, but that will take a long time to copy to RAM.
Graphically, this version is a disaster. Almost all application windows are too big for the 7" screen.
Then the default NetSurf browser is unusable, set to block everything. But even other browsers would not connect, so there must be a systemic problem.
But it is just too slow, and really a distro for an eeePC 4G should overclock by default/design (cpufrequtils/cpufreqd and clockmod).
But it has been an interesting experiment. Maybe antiX or a minimal Debian netinstall would be a better option, or maybe just a Puppy.
As for Kanotix in general:
It's a good ongoing experiment, and Kanotix seems to be an experiment ('nighlty, rolling-stable'!) rather than an attempt at the mainstream, and I respect it as such. I doubt that I would ever favour Kanotix over Debian Stable, but that's not a negative.
Kanotix does not claim to be the mainstream 'slayer', unlike some other other distros that always seem to disappoint.
The only real negative I have of Kanotix is that its documentation is sorely neglected and long out of date, like most of its website.
So a well earned 8/10.
Version: 2024 Rating: 9 Date: 2024-04-21 Votes: 3
After the announcement of kanotix64-slowfire-nightly-KDE.iso on this site, I put this old acquaintance on my Ventoy stick and spent half a day doing my routine work like browsing the internet, text editing, office suite, system administration, ...
Here are some remarks re the live experience:
* ex Windows 2k and XP users will feel at ease immedeately with the look & feel of the Plasma layout. This is a Plus, imho.
* plasmashell 5.27.5 is not the latest - greatest but okayish for a traditional desktop.
* I'd call the choice of packages a bit "eccentric":
- no curl, no iptables - both of which I consider esntial for a vanilla Linux system
- other app choices are redundant: FeatherPad, Kate, KWrite as GUI editors, Clementine, mpv, VLC, Kaffeine as audio utils.
Obviously this can easily be fixed with apt.
* For a German speaker the preconfigured language enviroment is flawless.
* The system behaved super stable on my 10 year old desktop with 8 GB RAM, no complaints, especially for a KDE veteran.
Re the comment below on RAM apetite: sadly this is common for previously "light" -distros, now based on Debian 12:
* BunsenLabs Boron
* cb++
* Q4OS TDE
just to name a few. They all now exceed the 1 GB limit after startup. This, I guess, is due to the kernel trying to support all sort of bleeding edge hardware and systemd services of which I am not sure what they are actually doing. As mentioned below, if you are really short on RAM, 4 GB or less, you'll want to go with Antix or wattOS. They are both Debian 12 based, giving you the latest ext4 -utilities, amongst other.
Summarized: kanotix64 will be my next hd installation candidate. :)
I am not a real "under the hood" kind of Linux guy. I regularly use both Mint and Endless OS with their Flatpak apps.
I put this one on a Ventoy USB stick and it ran smoothly off the stick on an older Elitebook. Getting the wireless connection was a breeze. This was the KDE VERSION.
But it deserves attention. If installing apps works out, I may install it on yet another laptop. But so far, I'm impressed.
But the "9" is well deserved.
BTW, the startup off the Ventoy USB via a USB 2.0 was quite fast. I'm keeping it on the USB stick for emergencies. I was very pleased to see both VLC media player and GIMP as standard apps ready to use. Libre Office pretty much rounds out the three things I used most. I'm no gamer, so I cannot speak to that.
Version: 2024 Rating: 7 Date: 2024-04-18 Votes: 3
That's a blast from the past finding a new version of Kanotix and of course I had to try it.....
Back in the day when Knoppix was one of the first 'live' CD's to emerge, Kanotix followed a few years later and to be honest I can't remember why I preferred it over Knoppix at the time, although back in those days when everything was burned to CD/DVD I had quite a collection of Linux CD/DVD's - live and install only.
Judging from the LXDE version I just tried, maybe it was the simplicity over Knoppix and the quick booting that grabbed my attention.
Of course nowadays there are dozens of 'live' versions and this *new* version looks a little dated but still fit for purpose.
I will install it for real on an old PC I have on the workbench at the moment and don't anticipate any problems, but having just booted it with Antix currently installed and it claiming to be using only 280 MB of RAM, that's going to be hard to beat.
In fact I know it is because I ran "htop" in Kantotix and it was using 700+ MB of RAM booting from a USB stick. That's taken the gloss off that bit of nostalgia but I'll still keep it on my ventoy USB stick for difficult to boot older hardware.
I might have to try the KDE version for comparison, but I fear Kanotix is just a pleasant memory now, with no real use in the modern world full of live CD's with more features.
At first I was a skeptic having started out years ago with Debian. But as I have had some hardware issues with my setup I was looking for something more convenient but still based on a stable Debian core. And thus after going through many distros and encountering different setup issues I landed with Kanotix on my main PC and Peppermint OS on my secondary unit and I can state that it was a relief. Easy access to apps and programs and no issues with hardware and/or performance. My thanks therefore goes out to all of you (in these distros) to all your work and keep it up ! The installation procedures are impressively stable and easy to grasp and still open for secondary input and personalization.
I have a great time with KDE as it is a multi facet desktop with many configuration and tweak possibilities. I am impressed of how logic it is compared to for instance MS products that I always perceive as hip hap put together and with solutions out of the blue.
I do think there are a lot of thought behind Kanotix in trying to make it understandable and accessible for the common user and its a success I dare to say. I'm an older fellow and can be rather slow in accepting change that is too radical and it is therefore a relief to find a distro that strives for stability and usability at ease. So to all good luck and to the Developers of Kanotix a special salute of great appreciation !!
Great distribution but abandoned, it's a shame that there is no ongoing work on updates. I hope that an update based on Debian 12 will be released, but it's just a dream.
Nevertheless, even despite all that, the older versions still work well even today. The distribution delivers what it promised.
I found Kanotix to be a golden middle ground among all the others. I am satisfied with its performance and stability.
It's always great to find a distribution that meets your needs and provides a positive computing experience.
I downloaded the KDE desktop. I am running KANOTIX Live persistent on a USB 3.0 flash drive. i want to revive a 12 year old laptop with two 2 GHZ Intel Celeron CPUS, 4GB RAM, no hard disk. KANOTIX seems to be the answer for this laptop dinosaur. I plan on adding a hard disk and upgrade the RAM to this laptop for future lab work.
Running KANOTIX Live persistent KDE desktop is the PERFECT solution. Once I install the hard disk, I will install the KDE desktop on the hard disk. I probably should use LXDE desktop, but I am a big fan of KDE, plus KANOTIX KDE desktop is working to my satisfaction. The laptop will be used in a lab environment only.
Thanks KANOTIX for this solution!
Linux Lab User
Version: 2014 Rating: 9 Date: 2023-07-09 Votes: 1
I love it.
I think I have been using it for nearly 20+ years. First on a laptop that had a max of 2GB RAM, then when I moved out of that Hardware I virtualized that OS and used it inside a VirtualMachine until it got old enough (I don't upgrade the OS, just some applications).
Then I used for a while Sparky (very good as well) and Lubuntu, but got back to Kanotix again. Moved from VM to real hardware and now again virtualizing it again when moving to new hardware (I upgrade HW every 11 years aprox.)
For the last 5+ years I have been running with this weird configuration.
1. Burnt the ISO into a USB
2. Boot from the USB, enabled persistence. You can run from USB, and I did that for a while, using a microSD card.
3. Copied that USB image into a HardDrive and resized partitions and created new ones.
It allows me to work with persistence (for the OS drive) and have my home_dir encrypted in a different partition. All fully portable. I have some usbDrives with a full clone of that in case my main computer gets broken/stolen.
Updating the backup of the OS is really easy, as you only copy the "persistence" partition (the differences), and your home_dir.
Note: The website is not updated, but the ISOs are.
As of 2023-07-09 the last version is still using LXDE instead of LXQt, but it doesn't bother me much.
Kanotix is one of the most overlooked distros on the planet. I work with Linux (preferred KDE desktop) on a daily basis and cringe when I see the descriptions touted for some of the more popular distros that are nowhere near as ‘stable’ and ‘user friendly’ as they are made out to be. Kanotix on the other hand does exactly what it says on the box with the minimum of fuss across a huge range of different hardware. The only downside is yet another type of installer and inexperienced users may well end up without a UEFI boot entry. This being the case boot into the newly installed system by using the UEFI entry listed on the live USB you just installed from and then run the following as root.
apt-get install --reinstall grub-efi
grub-install /dev/sda
update-grub
Thereafter your new system should boot independently.
I have been looking for a distro for my Lenovo Thinkpad L13, and Kanotix was the distro I needed - based on Debian 10 but with all drivers working out of the box. Thanks, Kano! Great work. It seems strange that this great distro does not deserve more attention.
* Kanotix slowfire-nightly-eeepc4G, on an eeePC 4G with 2GiB RAM
I'll try to be as objective as possible and not slate Kanotix with a bad score purely on my experimental experience with this particular version, as Kanotix is an excellent project, and its other versions do work well.
Because I wanted to have a persistent live USB version, I installed to a USB flashdrive via "sudo dd if=/path/to/iso of=/dev/sdx bs=1M", which worked as should be expected; and it booted without problem, albeit very slowly.
And Kanotix successfully installed, via the the user-friendly Acritoinstaller, leaving about 512MiB free, which is quite remarkable for a Debian 12 based distro.
However, it is clearly not suited to the eeePC 4G (Surf?), for several reasons.
Firstly, Compiz gets in the way and slows everything down. Why put compiz in a release for such an old machine?
The website does mention booting using the 'nocompiz' cheatcode, but Compiz with LXDE makes no sense to me.
It can also be booted with a 'toram' cheatcode, but that will take a long time to copy to RAM.
Graphically, this version is a disaster. Almost all application windows are too big for the 7" screen.
Then the default NetSurf browser is unusable, set to block everything. But even other browsers would not connect, so there must be a systemic problem.
But it is just too slow, and really a distro for an eeePC 4G should overclock by default/design (cpufrequtils/cpufreqd and clockmod).
But it has been an interesting experiment. Maybe antiX or a minimal Debian netinstall would be a better option, or maybe just a Puppy.
As for Kanotix in general:
It's a good ongoing experiment, and Kanotix seems to be an experiment ('nighlty, rolling-stable'!) rather than an attempt at the mainstream, and I respect it as such. I doubt that I would ever favour Kanotix over Debian Stable, but that's not a negative.
Kanotix does not claim to be the mainstream 'slayer', unlike some other other distros that always seem to disappoint.
The only real negative I have of Kanotix is that its documentation is sorely neglected and long out of date, like most of its website.
I am not a real "under the hood" kind of Linux guy. I regularly use both Mint and Endless OS with their Flatpak apps.
I put this one on a Ventoy USB stick and it ran smoothly off the stick on an older Elitebook. Getting the wireless connection was a breeze. This was the KDE VERSION.
But it deserves attention. If installing apps works out, I may install it on yet another laptop. But so far, I'm impressed.
But the "9" is well deserved.
BTW, the startup off the Ventoy USB via a USB 2.0 was quite fast. I'm keeping it on the USB stick for emergencies. I was very pleased to see both VLC media player and GIMP as standard apps ready to use. Libre Office pretty much rounds out the three things I used most. I'm no gamer, so I cannot speak to that.
After the announcement of kanotix64-slowfire-nightly-KDE.iso on this site, I put this old acquaintance on my Ventoy stick and spent half a day doing my routine work like browsing the internet, text editing, office suite, system administration, ...
Here are some remarks re the live experience:
* ex Windows 2k and XP users will feel at ease immedeately with the look & feel of the Plasma layout. This is a Plus, imho.
* plasmashell 5.27.5 is not the latest - greatest but okayish for a traditional desktop.
* I'd call the choice of packages a bit "eccentric":
- no curl, no iptables - both of which I consider esntial for a vanilla Linux system
- other app choices are redundant: FeatherPad, Kate, KWrite as GUI editors, Clementine, mpv, VLC, Kaffeine as audio utils.
Obviously this can easily be fixed with apt.
* For a German speaker the preconfigured language enviroment is flawless.
* The system behaved super stable on my 10 year old desktop with 8 GB RAM, no complaints, especially for a KDE veteran.
Re the comment below on RAM apetite: sadly this is common for previously "light" -distros, now based on Debian 12:
* BunsenLabs Boron
* cb++
* Q4OS TDE
just to name a few. They all now exceed the 1 GB limit after startup. This, I guess, is due to the kernel trying to support all sort of bleeding edge hardware and systemd services of which I am not sure what they are actually doing. As mentioned below, if you are really short on RAM, 4 GB or less, you'll want to go with Antix or wattOS. They are both Debian 12 based, giving you the latest ext4 -utilities, amongst other.
Summarized: kanotix64 will be my next hd installation candidate. :)
That's a blast from the past finding a new version of Kanotix and of course I had to try it.....
Back in the day when Knoppix was one of the first 'live' CD's to emerge, Kanotix followed a few years later and to be honest I can't remember why I preferred it over Knoppix at the time, although back in those days when everything was burned to CD/DVD I had quite a collection of Linux CD/DVD's - live and install only.
Judging from the LXDE version I just tried, maybe it was the simplicity over Knoppix and the quick booting that grabbed my attention.
Of course nowadays there are dozens of 'live' versions and this *new* version looks a little dated but still fit for purpose.
I will install it for real on an old PC I have on the workbench at the moment and don't anticipate any problems, but having just booted it with Antix currently installed and it claiming to be using only 280 MB of RAM, that's going to be hard to beat.
In fact I know it is because I ran "htop" in Kantotix and it was using 700+ MB of RAM booting from a USB stick. That's taken the gloss off that bit of nostalgia but I'll still keep it on my ventoy USB stick for difficult to boot older hardware.
I might have to try the KDE version for comparison, but I fear Kanotix is just a pleasant memory now, with no real use in the modern world full of live CD's with more features.
At first I was a skeptic having started out years ago with Debian. But as I have had some hardware issues with my setup I was looking for something more convenient but still based on a stable Debian core. And thus after going through many distros and encountering different setup issues I landed with Kanotix on my main PC and Peppermint OS on my secondary unit and I can state that it was a relief. Easy access to apps and programs and no issues with hardware and/or performance. My thanks therefore goes out to all of you (in these distros) to all your work and keep it up ! The installation procedures are impressively stable and easy to grasp and still open for secondary input and personalization.
I have a great time with KDE as it is a multi facet desktop with many configuration and tweak possibilities. I am impressed of how logic it is compared to for instance MS products that I always perceive as hip hap put together and with solutions out of the blue.
I do think there are a lot of thought behind Kanotix in trying to make it understandable and accessible for the common user and its a success I dare to say. I'm an older fellow and can be rather slow in accepting change that is too radical and it is therefore a relief to find a distro that strives for stability and usability at ease. So to all good luck and to the Developers of Kanotix a special salute of great appreciation !!
Great distribution but abandoned, it's a shame that there is no ongoing work on updates. I hope that an update based on Debian 12 will be released, but it's just a dream.
Nevertheless, even despite all that, the older versions still work well even today. The distribution delivers what it promised.
I found Kanotix to be a golden middle ground among all the others. I am satisfied with its performance and stability.
It's always great to find a distribution that meets your needs and provides a positive computing experience.
I downloaded the KDE desktop. I am running KANOTIX Live persistent on a USB 3.0 flash drive. i want to revive a 12 year old laptop with two 2 GHZ Intel Celeron CPUS, 4GB RAM, no hard disk. KANOTIX seems to be the answer for this laptop dinosaur. I plan on adding a hard disk and upgrade the RAM to this laptop for future lab work.
Running KANOTIX Live persistent KDE desktop is the PERFECT solution. Once I install the hard disk, I will install the KDE desktop on the hard disk. I probably should use LXDE desktop, but I am a big fan of KDE, plus KANOTIX KDE desktop is working to my satisfaction. The laptop will be used in a lab environment only.
I love it.
I think I have been using it for nearly 20+ years. First on a laptop that had a max of 2GB RAM, then when I moved out of that Hardware I virtualized that OS and used it inside a VirtualMachine until it got old enough (I don't upgrade the OS, just some applications).
Then I used for a while Sparky (very good as well) and Lubuntu, but got back to Kanotix again. Moved from VM to real hardware and now again virtualizing it again when moving to new hardware (I upgrade HW every 11 years aprox.)
For the last 5+ years I have been running with this weird configuration.
1. Burnt the ISO into a USB
2. Boot from the USB, enabled persistence. You can run from USB, and I did that for a while, using a microSD card.
3. Copied that USB image into a HardDrive and resized partitions and created new ones.
It allows me to work with persistence (for the OS drive) and have my home_dir encrypted in a different partition. All fully portable. I have some usbDrives with a full clone of that in case my main computer gets broken/stolen.
Updating the backup of the OS is really easy, as you only copy the "persistence" partition (the differences), and your home_dir.
Note: The website is not updated, but the ISOs are.
As of 2023-07-09 the last version is still using LXDE instead of LXQt, but it doesn't bother me much.
Kanotix is one of the most overlooked distros on the planet. I work with Linux (preferred KDE desktop) on a daily basis and cringe when I see the descriptions touted for some of the more popular distros that are nowhere near as ‘stable’ and ‘user friendly’ as they are made out to be. Kanotix on the other hand does exactly what it says on the box with the minimum of fuss across a huge range of different hardware. The only downside is yet another type of installer and inexperienced users may well end up without a UEFI boot entry. This being the case boot into the newly installed system by using the UEFI entry listed on the live USB you just installed from and then run the following as root.
apt-get install --reinstall grub-efi
grub-install /dev/sda
update-grub
Thereafter your new system should boot independently.
I have been looking for a distro for my Lenovo Thinkpad L13, and Kanotix was the distro I needed - based on Debian 10 but with all drivers working out of the box. Thanks, Kano! Great work. It seems strange that this great distro does not deserve more attention.
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