[Indy452]

I have trouble distinguishing which download to click when trying new and different Linux variants. When I go to download an iso on the download page I have sometimes many many options to choose from. Sometimes its just a gamble and I select the one that is most often labeled as an iso and is a more modern release with the distro numbers.

Is there a clearer way to distinguish os replacements from all the other stuff on download pages?

Take for example here Knoppix download page. Which one do I select to download the os?
http://archive.cs.stedwards.edu/knoppix/

Thanks, Neal

[lotuseclat79]

That's easy - select the latest (in English I presume), i.e.
KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso 03-Jan-2007 18:58 696M
plus, I would also get the knoppix-cheatcodes.txt file, the README, all of the docs files, and especially, the md5 file:
KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso.md5.asc 04-Jan-2007 21:15 1k
in order to determine that your downloaded iso file has no download errors, i.e. check the md5sum of the downloaded file against the md5 signature value in the md5 file.

-- Tom

[DoubleHelix]

Break down the file name as follows:
KNOPPIX - The name of the distribution. For Ubuntu, this would show as UBUNTU.
Vx.x.x - The version number. V5.x.x is more recent than V4.x.x.
CD - The distro fits on a CD. For larger distros, this would be DVD.
XXXX-XX-XX (ie 2007-01-04) - The date of the release.
DE or EN - DE = German (Deutsch), EN = English. If you want the English version, download the EN file.
The file with the .ISO extension (not .ISO.XXX.XXX) is the actual operating system. You can also tell by the size. Obviously an entire Linux distribution isn't contained in a 1K file. The ISO files are 700MB.

[Indy452]

Hey thanks for the help on this. I do appreciate it greatly.
I feel much more confident on what I'm choosing now. These directions were very helpful to me. I'm still learning.
So what is all the other stuff on this knoppix one for example anyway? Like the one labeled "http://archive.cs.stedwards.edu/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso.sha1.asc"
What does the sha1.asc stand for? The file is really small, 1K I think.

About the cheat codes. What would someone do with those? To me it really dosent make much sense.

Neal

[lotuseclat79]

Hi Neal,

It is simply an archive of different releases.

Sha1 refers to a cryptographic hash function. The sha1.asc file contains an sha1 string that is used to verify when the following command is run:
$ sha1sum http://archive.cs.stedwards.edu/knop...N.iso.sha1.asc
that the output string corresponds to the contents (string) of the sha1.asc file. If it does not correspond, then most likely the download failed - i.e. experienced a communication problem that suffered a bit loss. Ditto similarly for md5sum and md5 files.

The cheatcodes allow you to do optional things, like freeing up the CD drive by issuing at the boot prompt:
boot: toram
which if you have enough RAM (~1GB) will allow you to load Knoppix into RAM without needing the Live CD to remain in the CD drive - i.e. it is free for other uses.

-- Tom