Month: February 2006

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SimplyMEPIS 3.4-3

Linux.com has a review of the shiny new SimplyMEPIS 3.4-3.

The SimplyMEPIS installer is a bit different from other installers you might be used to. Rather than using an Anaconda-like installer or a text-mode installer like Debian’s or Ubuntu’s, you install SimplyMEPIS using a custom MEPIS installer after you boot into a live CD environment.

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First Look: BackTrack 3.0

DistroWatch.com has one of the first reviews of BackTrack, the results of WHAX (Whoppix) and Auditor security LiveCDs joining together.

Once on the desktop, you will immediately notice the “BackTrack” submenu on the KDE panel. This is the most exciting part of this distribution, a place were all the specialist utilities can be accessed from. It is pointless to list them all here, but let me assure you that the collection is truly astonishing and includes tools for sniffing remote router traffic, cracking Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), “bluesnarfing” (a method of hacking into Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones), scanning networks for vulnerabilities, uncovering weaknesses in the Point-to-Point Tunnelling Protocol (PPTP), decrypting SSL traffic and recovering passwords.

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Fixing Windows with Knoppix

ExtremeTech has a chapter of Hacking Knoppix on their site about using Knoppix to fix Windows. Included is useful information on partitioning, making changes to Windows, and Backing up data.

You or someone you know will encounter a seemingly unfixable problem with a Microsoft Windows operating system environment at one time or another. When this occurred in the past, most users would reinstall their operating systems, sometimes wiping out significant amounts of data that was needed on the system. Now you can use Knoppix to (often) correct your Windows system problems without losing any data and save the time associated with reinstalling all of the operating system files and applications.