Re: Ports

[Joe <joe@jretrading.com>]

On Sat, 30 Nov 2013 12:10:21 +0200
Marius Gavrilescu <marius@ieval.ro> wrote:

> Joe <joe@jretrading.com> writes:
> 
> > Here's my usual recommendation: try the latest Knoppix Live DVD. If
> > that drives all the parts of the laptop properly, then Debian will,
> > though you may need to do a bit of work.
> 
> Why use a Knoppix Live DVD instead of a Debian Live system?
> See http://live.debian.net/ for details about Debian Live.

Because, in my experience, Knoppix deals better with recent real-world
hardware than out-of-the-box Debian. That's where the effort goes in
creating Knoppix, there's no attempt to deal gracefully with upgrades,
which is a vital part of Debian. A lot of the Debian development effort
goes into making upgrades first of all possible at all, then relatively
painless. Knoppix aims for one-off, non-upgradeable versions which work
on nearly any hardware, including very new computers, and so tend to
use more recent kernels (on release) than even Debian sid.

A minor example: some years ago, I bought a mobile Internet dongle
(actually got it free, just postage payable) and expected it to work on
Windows, which it did. For Debian (including Ubuntu) I had to track
down the usb-modeswitch software before it had got anywhere near Debian
sid, decide that it was trustworthy, and find out how to use it. I
discovered after this that the dongle already worked in the latest
Knoppix, which for some reason I hadn't tried.

-- 
Joe