Why People Like cPanel Web Hosting Service

By Joyce Carcia

Before selecting a web hosting plan or a hosting account, it is important to ensure the quality, support and features they provide with the web hosting account. As far as maintaining a website is concerned, every webmaster would like to have a user friendly control panel. Recently, more and more hosting companies use cPanel as their hosting control panel. So why people like it? If the word cPanel is a strange word to you, never mind. I am going to explain what the cPanel is all about.

cPanel is a graphic application used to control applications in the within web page. It is a graphic program made by Linux Operating System. cPanel hosting has many great features which make managing your web site so much more easier.

Domains and Emails Management

cPanel control panel allows webmaster to easily log into the control panel or cPanel and manage your domain from anywhere you choose. You can save a lot of time and easily add domains, sub domains and email accounts. With cPanel hosting, you can also add email addresses, remove email addresses, and manage email. cPanel hosting gives you an easy way to set up an autoresponder.

Cron and MySQL

cPanel hosting allows you to set up cron jobs easily. And it usually comes with the ability to have MySql databases, which is crucial to any website. With MySql, it is very easy to create a database.

Website Statistics

When you buy cPanel hosting, you get access to a variety of ways to view the stats for your website. You can use Awstats to learn more about the visitors to your website, so as to improve your website.

In conclusion, the cPanel web hosting feature is a very active as well as an important part of your website which can help you generate more visitors.

Hostease offers you the best and cheap cPanel web hosting with great customer support (24×7 phone, email and live chat supp). All of the cPanel Hosting packages are available at a very cost effective price. You are also allowed to host multiple websites under the same account. All packages support for the PHP, MySQL, Perl, PHPMyAdmin, Cron Job and much more.

Hostease is a leading web hosting company, who offers REAL 24/7 support via email, live-chat and phone for client’s satisfaction. We never overload our server. All of our plans include the latest industry features available on the market. We cater for the personal blog as well as the multiple websites for large business group. Our packages are equipped with the features needed to meet all of your requirements.

10 Things to Know When You Select the Best Drupal Hosting

By Jared D. Ingram

Drupal hosting is a new concept in the internet world and has amazed all the human minds. In the beginning there was just a simple concept, web hosting. It later developed into dedicated web hosting and cheap web hosting, the technology just got better and PHP and ASP hosting services dawned on the web. The new technology just gets better with each day and right from the static pages to the dynamic ones, slowly the things only keep getting better and slowly the wordpress hosting, joomla hosting and PHPBB hosting has come our way.

Now, let us get down to Drupal hosting, this is basically a CMS or content management system and has been written down by the PHP and needs the MySQL database to function properly. Now after understanding the basic also know that drupal hosting can turn your website into large ones and small logs would soon help you in creating big directories and online communities.

If you are searching for best drupal hosting service for you then you must take 10 things into consideration:

• Drupal is established by PHP even though you can always select a windows hosting and PostgreSQL, but the finest alternative to function Drupal hosting is still the Linux and MySQL.
• Even now, drupal hosting is new to the internet world and not all the good web hosting companies will be able to offer you with solutions that give your Drupal site good support.
• A company that offers free Drupal installation and free themes etc does not mean that they are the best drupal hosting services. You will get the same free services with Fantastico, you have to know that all the hosting companies have these tools set up to be able to provide you with the services and that Fantastico is already very popular in the web hosting companies.
• The clean URL support is vital requirement from the best hosting as it would make your website more search engine friendly.
• If you want to get multi-site features of the best hosting, you would have to get an access to the Unix Shell and create a Symlink. Though for the security purposes, this might not be permissible. In such cases you can also create a PHP script for accomplishing your task.
• The best drupal hosting can only work if the database runs very fast and a lot o companies fail to do that.
• There are some hosting companies that will set a limit for you to utilize the CPU resource or the Memory resource. You will have to check with the hosting providers and understand the data and also keep a close check on your website to see if it gets down for this trouble. If this is the trouble then you will have to upgrade your hosting.
• Select a drupal hosting company that permits you to preserve your cron jobs.
• There is a common phenomenon for all the shared web hosting companies; here you will receive unlimited bandwidth and disk space. But do not believe these companies and always remember that you will get for what you will pay!
• Backup your website daily, this is really important.

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Should I Use a Linux Or a Windows Server?

By Gary Klingsheim

Even some folks who are pretty computer savvy, and can make Microsoft Office jump through hoops, are less knowledgeable when it comes to the operating system (OS) and networking technology that drives the Internet. Most people who do not work in that end of the business need to do a little homework when confronted with the question, Should I use a Linux or Windows server?

There are some arcane hybrids and do-it-yourself OS schemes around, but the OS choice you have at most hosting companies today is between Linux and Windows. Hosting companies don’t always clarify exactly why one might be better than the other for a particular customer or situation, leading some folks to conclude that there is really no difference at all. This is not the case. It does matter what kind of server you use, and there are clear differences between Linux and Windows.

Licensing costs money

All the various flavors of Windows, from the multiple versions of the new Windows 7 to the “enterprise” (server) packages, belong wholly to Microsoft, also known as the “Evil Empire” to the hackers and open source fans that prefer Linux. Linux, being open source, is free. This is the first major difference with important repercussions, since the hosting company’s costs for licensing Windows will be passed on to the customer (that’s you). Free, open source Linux means lower hosting costs all around, if only by a few dollars per month.

Getting a Windows hosting package is going to be a bit more expensive, but not so much more that you should make the difference a deal-breaker. Other factors — the make and model of the servers, company location, package offer details — can affect pricing as much or more, so make sure to get the big picture and don’t bog yourself down in an “OS controversy.” That said, you should know the operational, stylistic and tech-related differences between the two server types in order to make an informed decision.

Slow down and consider

Now, simply because you use a PC with Microsoft (MS) Windows, or even built your own Web site with it, doesn’t mean you have to have a Windows server. You will access your site through such tools as Web-based control panels and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software, and can do so from a Macintosh running Mac OS X, a PC running Windows 7 or a homemade computer running Mandrake or RedHat (distributions of Linux). Some commands will differ, perhaps, but all the tools do the same thing, in much the same way.

Slow down enough to consider what you actually need to do with your site and what you expect from the server (and hosting firm). E-mail protocols, both IMAP and POP, work fine in both environments, as do PHP, the standardized HTML and XML, JavaScript and “file helpers” like Adobe Flash and Reader. However, Frontpage extensions, ASP, the.Net environment, Access, Windows media and other MS technologies will require a Windows server. For these particular features, Linux support ranges from limited to non-existent, and trying to work around the restrictions will cost you a lot more than paying the difference between the hosting packages.

Security and management

There have been some contentious arguments about the relative stability and security records of Linux and Windows server environments. Some computer professionals are simply knee-jerk anti-MS partisans, and there are also any number of MS fans that are anti-Linux (as well as anti-Mac). The fact that Windows is the most common OS in the world has both advantages and drawbacks. Millions of people are working on making it better, and just as many are trying to shoot it down in flames.

On the other hand, Linux is now most common server OS in use and hackers have had greater than expected success subverting it, too. The fact is that the platform in use is not as important to security as systems administration, attentive technicians and company management. If security is high on your list, you need to examine the company as much or more than the company’s equipment. Don’t take their marketing materials as a promise — do some due diligence here. It matters.

A toss-up?

There is probably little difference in server performance because of the choice of OS. Again, it can come down to how the companies install their software and maintain their hardware — Linux just might be “faster” in some functions than Windows if, in fact, the Windows OS was installed in default mode and not “tweaked.” (This can be true of Linux installs, too, of course.) In the broadest terms, performance is comparable and you can have a fine, effective and efficient hosting experience with either kind of server.

The bottom line is that you should certainly consider the kind of server, particularly if you use MS technologies than need a Windows environment, but your search should be for a good host, not a good server. A company with the best equipment in the world will be no help to you if it is mismanaged, oblivious to security lapses and technologically out of its depth. With a rough equivalence in features, reliability, security and cost, a “winner” is impossible to choose beforehand. You can win — or lose — with any kind of server, so keep looking at the big picture and just make your decision.

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Linux Server and Home Web Hosting

By Jan Pascal

If you are interested in web design or development you should have some local test place where you can check and debug websites. If you are doing this professionally you will probably invest in a real web server. But if you are doing this for fun or the reliability and speed is not a problem then you can have a simple solution with minimal investment–own Linux server. There are also some simple and effective solutions with applications like WampServer or EesyPHP. You can use them and have a good testing environment. However, having a dedicated Linux computer offers many opportunities for additional functions. In addition to this, a physical web server running Linux is a very close approximation of the real hosting environment. To install and use such server you need no special knowledge or skills. All you need is access to the internet and computer with web browser.

To set up a small but useful Linux server you need a computer. Your old computer that was replaced with a new fancy multi-core machine is a perfect candidate for this project. Linux operating system usually runs on any machine so you should not be concerned about the processor speed or the amount of RAM. If you are new to Linux you should learn some basic tips by browsing the web. There are many websites that provide step by step instructions on how to download and install Linux on any computer. The most important rule about solving any problem is to simply google for it. Every problem you may encounter during installation or customization is somewhere already mentioned together with possible solutions or hints.

After you have a running Linux computer you should check if networking is working and if it boots without any errors. Then you need to install web server software. For this you will need at least Apache, MySQL and PHP. To upload files you will also need a FTP server software. To find out how to install applications you should again check web resources where you will find every step described in details. Before you can test your home hosting you should configure Apache for shared hosting and create few directories for your projects. This should be enough for basic web development.

Now you can put some files in the www folder and they should be visible in your browser. Simply enter the IP address of your Linux computer into the address bar of your browser and you should get your default website. You can add a line to your hosts file where you can associate a name with the IP address of the server. Then you will be able to access the server with this name.

An additional upgrade of the server can be some software to allow access from windows computers. For this purpose you can install a Samba file server which will allow you to access www or any other folder from the explorer in any Windows computer. With a Linux system running on your old computer you can get much more than just a testing environment for web development.

The author uses home Linux server for file storage and web development. One of his latest projects is a website about home hair removal which provides information about popular hair removal topics like facial hair removal for women. This website was created on the local Linux computer and then uploaded to the real web hosting server where you can access it.

By Sophia Carcia

Web Hosting Checklist

While there are a large number of web hosting providers all over the world, if you are new to web hosting industry, you may be confused about finding a low cost yet reliable one. In this article, I will give you a brief checklist which you must truly consider when you are shopping around.

1. Disk space

2. Bandwidth

3. Domains

4. Programming language

5. Email accounts

6. E-commerce features

7. A good control Panel

8. A good technical support

9. Flexibility

10. Additional service

11. A robust infrastructure

Disk space

The disk space is space used to hold the files that make up your website, including html files, graphics, scripts and multimedia content. Every hosting account has a certain allotment of disk space. When you are looking for a web host, you need to find a provider, who can offer you more disk space so that you will free of worry about overuse. Especially, if your website including things like download files, pictures, music and video, you will require more disk space.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth (also known as data transfer), refers to the total amount of data that downloaded or uploaded from a particular website or web hosting account during a given time (usually a month). A web hosting account is restricted to stay under its monthly bandwidth allotment just like the water traffic limited by the pipe. If you are going to have a lot of visitors or to host large files, video or photo, then you need a high bandwidth plan.

Domain names

What is a domain name? Domain name is the address on the internet. If you are going to start any kind of online business, you need to get a unique domain name (address) so that your website can be reach by people from all over the world. For example, the domain name www.Hostease.com identifies the location where this web site is hosted. Many of you may wonder you need to register a domain with domain register; this is not always the case, many web hosting company offer you free domain name if you hired their web host. This will save you money. Just like, the company hostease offers free domain name for life and multiple sub-domain.

Programming languages

Many newbie may ask question on forum likes “Which is the best programming language? Is it PHP, ASP, CGI or any other? ” There is not really the best language to use. It really depends on what you are trying to do, on what platform. If you are going to using a Linux shared host, then PHP is probably the best. If you are on a windows hosting, then.asp might be a good choice. Personally, Linux web hosting with PHP and MySQL is my favorite.

PHP is short for “Hypertext Pre-processor” and becoming increasing popular for creating dynamic web pages. It can replace Microsoft Active Server Pages (.asp) technology on Linux/Unix server. PHP enjoy great popularity due to the open source root, which means you can use it freely. As a conjunction with PHP, MySQL is well known for its quick processing, proven reliability and ease of use. MySQL is an essential part of almost every open source PHP application. Of course, it would better if the hosting company provides all the scripts, PHP5, CGI, fast CGI, Perl, Python, and SSI for you.

Email accounts

This is another important feature for your online business. You need to check out that your hosting solution includes email accounts for your staff. Email features, such as unlimited email account, POP3 account, web mail, mailing lists, auto responders, catchalls, spam filter, and mail forwarding etc should be support for the ease and security of your business.

E-commerce features

The purpose of hosting your website on the internet is to make business and profits. Except that you will definitely only focus on blogging instead of online business, you need to get a shopping cart for your website so that your customers to order and buy your products. Check out with the web hosting to make sure they offer shopping carts for your current or future business requirements.

A good control Panel

A control panel in web hosting refers to the interface provided by the hosting company for the maintenance and monitoring of the hosted website. You get administrative control over your domains, email accounts, database and web stats among other features. The main purpose of a control panel is to enrich user experience by providing a number of tools that dramatically reduce administrative challenges. One of the most widely used control panels on the market is cPanel, which allows you to control various aspects of your hosting account and even provides details on bandwidth and other statistics.

A good technical support

It is important to make sure that your web hosting company provides you professional customer support. Their responses should be fast and make to the point. There are many web hosting companies that can very quickly identify the problem, but take a lot of time to solve the problem. It is extremely important that you can access to their support via different ways, email, tickets, knowledge-base, phone, forums. If you really want to make profits with whatever online business you have, you should select a web host that has excellent customer care and technical staff that is professionally trained to handle all sorts of problems.

Flexibility

In the initial days, a business may not require a large space and rich feature to support the website, as the business expanding, you may need new applications and service, therefore you need to upgrade your package. You need to find a hosting company who can offer you various hosting plan according to your business requirements.

Additional service

A reputed company will also provide additional service, such as, Security Socket Layer certificates, domain registering, website designing to ensure that the customer can enjoy a one-stop solution.

A robust infrastructure

Last but not least is the up-time issue. Although most web hosting services will offer you at least 99% up time, there are still a few out there offering less than that. Do not settle for a hosting service that cannot offer 99% up time guarantee. Only with high quality services that backed by powerful data center and cooling systems, you will not be interrupt by the performance issues of the server. Try to make sure that the servers are monitored 24/7 to avoid any possible external threats.

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Linux PHP Vs Windows ASP Web Hosting Comparison
By Darren W Chow

One of the first decisions to make while choosing web hosting is – what platform to opt for? Windows or Linux? PHP or ASP?

First of all, note that sites with static pages such as blogs can run on either Windows or Linux hosting platforms. These only use HTML and CSS, which are supported equally well by both operating systems.

When you require dynamic content on your website, such as eCommerce facilities, forums or other forms of scripting, then you need to pay attention to your hosting platform.

Traditionally, Linux servers are used for scripts based on PHP or Perl. These scripts include Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and many other blogging or content management systems. Windows servers, on the contrary, are used with scripts written in ASP, ASP(dot)Net or Access. MySQL works equally well with both Windows and Linux. Today, cross-platform scripting – that is, scripting with PHP/Perl on Windows or with ASP/ASP(dot)NET/Access on Linux – is permitted by some ISPs.

However, cross-platform scripting will never give the smooth performance that a program does when run on its native platform – it is a bit like using emulators to run programs that are not native to the OS. There is one exception here, though – PHP runs equally well on Windows and Linux, so Linux-based hosting is no longer essential to run PHP-based scripts and applications.

Most computer geeks will advise you to go for Linux hosting, as Unix – on which Linux is based – is a far more secure and stable platform than Windows’ alternative. While this is demonstrably true – think of the millions of viruses for Windows systems, and the rare bug that crops up in Linux – it is also true that efficient server administration can render a Windows system as secure as a Linux one.

Speedwise, there is no clear winner between Windows and Linux. Some things work faster on Windows, while others work faster on Linux. So to choose between operating systems, cost and security would have to be the deciding factors. Linux here is substantially cheaper, as it is an open-source system, and most of its applications are also under GNU public licenses – in other words, free. Windows hosting comes with the added cost of the OS, and certain applications that the hosting company has to continually pay for.

As for the ASP-PHP comparison, ASP is almost universally the winner where speed is concerned. However, the learning curve in ASP or ASP(dot)NET is much steeper than in PHP – something that can backfire for advanced users looking for greater control and freedom. PHP, however, is still one of the most popular scripts around thanks to its versatility and the solid, useful applications being written using it.

In the end, choosing between Windows ASP and Linux PHP as hosting platforms becomes a matter of individual preference and contingent need. Depending on your budget, security concerns and familiarity with the computer language, you can pick either of them and successfully run a dynamic website for a long time to come.

Linux php hosting are generally more cheaper and faster compare to windows ASP hosting. For php hosting, we highly recommend Fatcow hosting offering unlimited storage and unlimited domain hosting. Find more info from our Fatcow Review and coupon website.

Top Social Network Platforms
By Jonathon R Boone

If you are hoping to produce a social network and you are in a rush, then you should visit a website like Ning. Ning is the first larger hosted social networking site that comes to mind. If you are one of those who wish to have more control of their web site, that is, having your own personalized domain name, controlling the design and of course, the brandmark, then the advisable way is to run one of the off the shelf networking scripts available.

There are quite a few social networking scripts on the market these days, both free and paid for. The reality is that only a handful are worth the money.

After a brief community survey amongst social networking webmasters, it didn’t take long to figure out who was running what. From our tally we determined these four social networking sites to be the top five currently on the market.

DZOIC Handshakes offers up one of the foremost open source community programs for this year, so there is very little doubt about the usability of this software. For the most part, Dzoic Handshakes is a potent piece of computer software that dishes up article writing, instant messaging, community, video, music plus tons more. In fact, it is one of the most versatile pieces of software that provides pretty much everything you need to start a social site right out of the box.

Dzoic Handshakes works on a runs on a Linux, Apache, MySql and Php environment is simple to upload, install and configure. Having very little php skill, you can get your social networking script up and functional in no time.

PhpFox is possibly Dzoic Handshakes strongest competitor and designed with similar functionality. It is awesome platform perfect for just about any niche. With PhpFox, you can tap into a huge community of adept PhpFox users and utilize their talents. Features in the software include live chat, Videos, Advanced profile editing, video and image tagging, RSS feeds plus much more. You have endless possibilities with this software and like Handshakes, it is 100% encryption free.

PhpFox works on a runs on a Linux, Apache, MySql and Php environment like handshakes.
What are people saying about PhpFox? Find out here.

Social Engine, is 100% open source, is a modulure based, social networking software that operates on the Php, MySql,Apache and Linux environment. You can easily customize Social Engine and the Social Engine script writers have gone to surpassing lengths to get Social Engine user friendly and easy to customise. Using thoroughly anotated and unencrypted source code, you should have no problem navigating your webpages. The Coders also went out of their way to supply fully commented HTML templates for all the pages of your social network.

The only major downside to using the Social Engine is that it can get expensive. If you were to simply purchase the bare bone script you would not have enough to make a sound social network. You would have to purchse additional modules which can get expensive.

Get more reviews on the Social Engine Networking script here.|See what other people are saying

Dolphin 6 – Smart Community Builder is versatile social networking script that boasts itself as being free. We all know all great things come with a catch. Boonex has licensing features that allow you to slowly get away from their control for a small cost. The fees are dependent upon the duration of the licensing. Boonex comes with stockpile of bells and whistles. Bells and whistles include 100% AJAX Forums, Photo Sharing, Video Sharing, Music Sharing, Blogs, Polls, Search Events, Groups, Mailbox, Friends, Customizable Profiles, Powerful Admin Panel, Design Templates and Languages!

Dolphin – Smart Community Builder is based on php and operates on the Php, MySql, Apache and Linux environment

John is a fulltime social networking consultant who helps newcomers get their social networking websites off the ground

social networking software reviews

Comparisons of Linux and Windows Web Hosting
By Shellaine Enfesta

There are a lot of people trying to compare windows web hosting to Linux based webhosting. There are many similarities as well as the benefits and the advantages of both. While there are so many similarities and advantage, it is those little specifics that count the most. It needs to be broken down in order to know the many similarities and advantages.

Current versions of Windows Server also support PHP. Most Windows hosting packages today are based on either Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or 2008 operating systems. Although Linux is dominant in the hosting arena, Windows is becoming more common and now stands firm as a solid number-two option. For the rest of us, however, most of whom can barely spell HTML, never mind use it, building a website is something either best left to the aforementioned techno-geeks, or to Windows and Microsoft. If you’re looking for an inexpensive way to host your personal site, blog or small business web site, than look no further.

For example, all components from IIS (Internet Information Services) to the SQL Server database system are designed to support one another. Two of the most essential components you definitely need to consider are storage and bandwidth. Our guaranteed web hosting providers offer many years of experience in managing your website or shopping cart or will build and support an entire on-line store.

NET, both of which are web application frameworks that can help you creates a dynamic, feature-rich website. Plesk is a web based interface to your Windows web hosting account that allows you to create e-mail addresses and mailboxes, view your web site traffic statistics, set permissions on your HTML, ASP, and ASP. Outsourcing enables a company to reduce its TCO by freeing assets, such as cash that is allocated to capital expenditures and the expense of specially-trained staff, which can account for anywhere from 22 percent to 47 percent of the total budget for the Web site.

Linux web hosting in the beginning, the system was primarily but sparingly used by diehard fans and experienced users due to its complexity. Here are the other advantages of choosing Linux web hosting: The internet itself is based on interconnected networking computers, something that comes naturally for Linux.

Both operating systems have pros and cons to consider when deciding which to use for hosting. Commercial support is offered via a number of vendors. Linux web hosting is not a complicated job like the way it is portrayed by pundits who compare it with the user-friendly interface of Windows.

The bottom line when you compare these two main web hosting systems, it all depends on your business or personal preference. All you need to do is to compare the advantages and disadvantages and then make the informed decision on which web hosting systems is more of your preferences and easier to undertake.

Get More Tips and Info On Windows Web Site Hosting and Windows Hosting Reseller From A Cheap Web Hosting Before Buying Your Hosting Package compare the Hosting Plans and Decide.

Welcome to the World of Knoppix
By Mike Ber

Knoppix is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. Knoppix can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it.

If one is to believe news from the Linux camp one could be forgiven for thinking that the world was out to destroy the beautiful thing that is the Open Source movement. Angry fingers would be pointed in several directions, surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) all in the general vicinity of Microsoft. Of course, the noises from the other side are just as loud (actually quite a bit louder). They, in turn, claim that Linux is ‘unsafe’, hard to use and even harder to maintain, and worse of all, prone to exploitation by hackers (since the source code is open source and thus can essentially be seen and played around with by anyone).

I’ve always preferred the uncomfortable seat on the fence, despite the green grass on both sides. Granted, you tend to get sore sitting in such a way after a while, but the view from here is great, and argument very clear. The battle between proprietary code (led by Microsoft, no less) and open source (Linux) has been going on ever since Linus Torvalds created Linux and started the process that has made it the genuine force that it is today. And as is the case in such fighting, there are three sides to the story: Microsoft’s tale, Linux’s woes and my bit of the story. And my part begins with the most interesting OS of them all…

What if you had an operating system that ran completely from a CD? That’s right, just one CD. And this CD also contained very useful programs for word-processing, data recovery and system repair utilities, image-editing and internet connectivity, along with excellent audio and video players? What if all you had to do was to boot from this CD and voila, in a few minutes your new OS had taken over your PC. Taken over? Nothing to worry about, as removing the OS from your computer was to be as easy as removing the CD. Literally.

Welcome to the world of Knoppix.

Given the fact that we are in the midst of multi-gigabyte operating systems that we there would be such a competent one that could be run entirely from a CD-ROM is stupendous. Imagine the possibilities. Customized versions of the Knoppix OS would mean that you could literally carry a streamlined version of your home PC around with you wherever you went. Need to recover data from a crashed hard-disk? Boot into Knoppix and use the system repair and data recovery tools to retrieve your data (burn it to a CD-R, or transfer it via a PC-to-PC connection) and maybe attempt to fix the disk as well. Secondly, if you are a web developer who wants to check how sites look from within a Linux environment, all you need to do is pop Knoppix in and check out your websites from Mozilla or Konqueror. Away from the office and want to work on customized software specially made for your company? Knoppix, along with a USB drive to store data, turns your crisis into a simple matter of finding a PC. And like all Linux versions, meeting the minimum system requirements (see http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html#requirements) would be a snap (82 MB RAM, CDROM drive, SVGA card, Intel compatible CPU (i486 or better)).

Knoppix also boasts a classic boot screen

There is a lot to be said for Knoppix, especially for its appeal to Linux newbies (or ‘noobs’, as vernacular has it). With no need for an installation (although that is given as an option), and with excellent hardware detection, Knoppix has single-handedly done away with the two major concerns for Windows users wanting to try out Linux: A complicated installation process, and the problem of finding the right drivers for all your hardware. In effect, Knoppix is an excellent choice for someone who wants to try out Linux without having to go through the usual hassle. It’s easy to use, and doesn’t mess with your system either. Despite being run completely off the CD, it runs pretty quickly as well.

Knoppix also boasts a comprehensive suite of programs that has almost everything that home/office desktop could be used for. The package list is tremendous, with the compression system allowing for over 2GB of stuff to be stored. This is amazing and is certainly more than any other single live CD can hold. For a basic idea as to how you should be fine, Knoppix contains 2 office suites (Koffice and OpenOffice), has KDE, Mozilla (web+mail+IRC), PHP, MySql, samba, xmms and tons more. This is no gaming platform, but more than enough is packed in there to let you do accomplish most of your usual tasks on the PC (see http://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=knoppix for a complete list). And if you want more, do an installation and now that you can write on the hard-disk, use apt-get upgrade, apt-get dist-upgrade (after making sure your sources.list is correct) to get more.

Knoppix does have a few minor problems. These are limited to a few quirks within the KDE, some problems with hardware detection and complaints that 5 minutes to boot a PC is too long (which, by the way, is quite quick for a live-CD OS). The reality is that such problems are expected from an Open Source operating system. Linux platforms are not judged by the same criteria that Windows, or any other ‘paid-for’ OS is (this is perhaps a major reason behind the Linux-bashing that goes on in Microsoft-related circles). No one expects Knoppix to work perfectly when detecting hardware, and the fact that it more often than not works extremely well forms the basis of our judgment, whereas if Windows XP Professional refused to detect my LAN card I would not stop cursing their ineptitude (no matter that it detected everything else, or everyone else’s card). The standards applied here are totally different, and thus Knoppix survives all such criticism and continues to bathe in the afterglow of a job well done.

A few thoughts on customization. One gets a feeling that the package is perhaps too comprehensive (how many text editors do you really need?). My view is that at least for the downloadable version, there should be a way for the user to select or unselect the programs that are required. As such, one could select their favorite browser, text editor, office suite, etc. and produce a more compact installation package. Theoretically, you could also build a custom Knoppix installation that would even run your office applications (as mentioned earlier). The possibilities are great, and hopefully the Knoppix development team will take into consideration the idea of streamlining / customization, if only for the downloadable version.

So there you have it. A special flavor of Linux that offers, apart from a live-CD OS, a quite stable operating environment as well (and comes bundled with lots of goodies) that is unprecedented in terms of hardware detection. And more importantly, this could be a precursor of things to come with respect to OS development and how the industry perceives the role of an operating system, be it Linux or Windows. Maybe it’s time for diversification and specialization in the OS market, and maybe, just maybe, Microsoft is set to lose more ground as the ‘free’ operating systems get better and better.

Mike Ber is the owner of the Canadian Domain Name Portal called http://www.Every.ca. He is also a contributing author to Canadian Computer Magazine and http://www.Developer.ca website.

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