April 18, 2005
Ubuntu Better, Knoppix Best
Last week I had a chance to try out some more Live CDs. I needed to get some files of an old machine at home which was running Windows 98. Rather than get it talking to my network I contrived to boot it into Linux and transfer the files onto my USB flash disk.
This nicely coincided with the latest Ubuntu release the Hoary Hedgehog. So I downloaded and burnt the Live CD. The good news is that my experience was better than the last time. There is now a shut down option on the menu. The bad news is that it didn't recognise my USB flash drive, and even worse news is that it doesn't auto mount your Windows partition. So I couldn't read or write the files I needed.
So I turned to the old faithful Knoppix. Not only did it recognise my USB drive but it also automatically mounted the Windows partition, allowing me to complete the file transfer.
The one thing that Ubuntu (and Kubuntu) has going for it is look and feel. It's a lot more polished and pretty than Knoppix. I'm just puzzled why the Live CD doesn't automatically mount the Windows partition as standard.
Whilst booting into Linux from a CD is nice as a demonstration of the operating system for about five minutes you will want to actually do something sooner or later. Having your files available does help this immensely.
Posted by Andy Todd at April 18, 2005 08:26 AM