Knoppix 7.2.0 LiveCD test

[6502coder]

[Sorry, this was intended for the "Other Distros" thread. My bad.]

I had a look at the current Knoppix release, 7.2.0, on my aging WinXP system. Knoppix is Debian-based, and comes as either a LiveCD or a LiveDVD; the latter of course has more apps bundled in. For this test I used the LiveCD version.

Test Platform:
Dell Dimension 8300 desktop, P4 2.8 Ghz, 3 GB ram, 120 GB internal hard drive. Western Digital 1 TB USB hard drive.
Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 graphics.
Acer 20" monitor 1600x900 px
Wired ethernet internet connection.

The LiveCD booted up in about a minute or so and went straight to the desktop. The only glitch was that the display was offset about 60 pixels to the right. I didn't bother using the Acer's controls to try to fix this.

"free" reported that 334M of memory was in use.
"uname" says the kernel is 3.9.6 #25 SMP.
LXDE is the desktop.
A quick check showed that my WD USB drive was detected and my internet connection was live. Here's a quick rundown on some of the major apps:

LXTerminal 0.1.11 terminal emulator
PCManFM 1.1.0 filemanager
Iceweasal 21.0 browser, with Adblock Plus and NoScript already installed.
LibreOffice 4.0.33 office suite
Leafpad
Gnome Mplayer 1.0.6
GPicView
Midnight Commander
GIMP 2.8.4
Xpdf 3.03 pdf reader
Synaptic Package Mgr

Vim 7.3 is the console text editor; I did not find Geany or any other IDE. As I mentioned above, the LiveDVD version has a much larger set of apps.

I ran a variety of music, image, and video files through MPlayer and GPicView, and all were handled flawlessly. This was my first experience with Iceweasal but being a Seamonkey/Firefox user, of course it was all very familiar. This is a nice, basic Linux system that might make a good replacement for WinXP.