bio-knoppix bioknoppix

[gsgs]

ahh, I spent another 3h this morning to get Linux running on my other notenook to no avail.
I have 2 knoppix USB-sticks, and ~5 DVDs to boot from but all that I could get was freedos,
and then, later, when I gave up, even that didn't work.The originally installed Windows is also
no longer available and it takes so long to boot and wait until I decide that there is no progress.
Or long tedious licences ("openSuse") which I won't read.
And sorting cables ...

It has 3.6GB RAM and 2 CPUs with 2.4GHz each.
I got 20 Computers running simultaneously without keyboard,monitor, HDs, and shared RAMs
and floppies, but that was 15y ago and I'm probably no longer "computer savvy")

Also, "in a week" is much time for a software that costs nothing and what I don't even know yet
whether it will work for me.

My software is mostly self-written over the years, adapted to my needs,
so there is no good replacement.

----------edit--------------
I ordered "Linux Fedora 23" USB-stick now from the UK, let's see ...
And also "Ubuntu" DVD, since someone mentioned Ubuntu here.
And also 4 more Knoppix "bootable" DVDs, several versions.

[GenoMax]

No you can't use SD cards as a replacement for RAM. They are probably too slow to be used for computation also.

If you are reasonably computer savvy you could bring yourself up to speed on unix in less than a week. I will include this link in case you feel inclined to do this.

What sort of utilities do you have/need on windows side? We can perhaps suggest unix equivalents so you could just stay in the unix world.

[gsgs]

I can just buy a new notebook with lots of RAM and Linux (will the knoppix - USB - stick work ?)
No problem.
(can't we use micro-SDs as RAM ? or is it too slow)

But how long will it take me to get familiar enough with Linux ?

And then, I still have to export everything back to Windows-cmd.exe=DOS,
since I have all my utilities there

maybe I should have switched to Linux long ago

[GenoMax]

There is: http://environmentalomics.org/bio-linux/

You may also find it easier to run ubuntu or other unix distro in virtual box on Windows. That said make sure you have beefy enough hardware available. STAR will require lots of RAM no matter where it runs (in virtual box/or natively).

[gsgs]

I just found this:

http://bioknoppix.hpcf.upr.edu/

alas, the last update was from 2008

is there a more actual similar project ?

-------------------edit 2015/12/10-------------------

http://bioknoppix.hpcf.upr.edu/downloads

bioknoppix is 688MB for download as an "iso" file
but none of the 5 mirror sites were available

> For those who have slow internet connections you can buy a bioknoppix-0.2.1beta cd for a
> nominal fee at http://cheapbytes.com. It is also available at http://linuxcd.org.

none of these links work for me

http://www.bicpu.edu.in/biotools.htm

> Bioknoppix is a customized distribution of Knoppix Linux Live CD. With this distribution you
> just boot from the CD and you have a fully functional Linux OS distribution with open source
> applications targeted for the molecular biologist. Beside using some RAM, Bioknoppix doesn't
> touch the host computer, being ideal for demonstrations, molecular biology students, workshops, etc.

the Spanish mirror may have changed to ftp://ftp.rediris.es/mirror/
but I didn't find it there either