Knoppix 3.3 Is Out

maedls.at writes "After 6 months of development, the latest version of Knoppix 3.3 is out - Kernel 2.4.22 with HIGHMEM (4GB) support, KDE 3.1.3, XFree86 4.3, OpenOffice 1.0.3 (German and English), KOffice 1.2.1, new boot options for RAM or hard-disk preload of the CD. Possibility to create a persistent homedir with personal data and desktop settings on a memory stick or similar, optional with AES encryption." The main Knoppix site is still down in protest of European software patent legislation (click on the link inside the English paragraph to get to the meat of the site), but the excellent knoppix.net has a detailed changelog.

BitTorrent

[alwsn]

What, no BitTorrent link? I'm disapointed. Anyone have a torrent for it?

DVD Knoppix?

[Comsn]

when will the dvd knoppix be released?

and start including mplayer on these cds ;\

Not to ruin the mood...

[Anonymous Coward]

But what is with the sites "protesting" software patents when all they do it have a link directly to their site in the index file? If you are protesting I think it would be more effective to shut the site down rather than to make an annoying index page.

Fix for nvidia chipset?

[I_am_Rambi]

I've looked but couldn't find if they have fixed a problem with the nvidia chipset for the AMD platform. I've tried to boot from the previous version of Knoppix, and it died. Does anyone know if this has been fixed? I think this is a major bug and needs to get fixed.

how about a patched kernel

[the_2nd_coming]

with ACPI included for all those who have ACPI laptops but want to use Knoppix every now and again but can't get sound working because of the damn ACPI system.

Why no OpenOffice.org 1.1.0?

[The Revolutionary]

That's dissapointing. I had hoped to see OpenOffice.org 1.1.0. OpenOffice.org 1.1 is available in Debian unstable (contrib). Seeing as Knoppix is a modified Debian system, I can't imagine what the holdup might be. Does anyone have any insight into the situation?

Knoppix still king of bootable CDs

[proxima]

Though other bootable CDs like morphix [morphix.org] look promising, I'm impressed with the rate at which Knoppix moves forward. Knoppix has consistently displayed nice polish visually and in terms of usability.

As it's debian-based, I'm hoping some more of the hardware-detection, auto-setup, and visual polish can make it to stock Debian (yes, I know you can "upgrade" to full Debian after booting knoppix). The boot process is cleaned up and functional for new users to Linux, and the speed is remarkable for loading a compressed image off a CD (so long as you have 128+ megs of RAM).

Kudos to those who work and contribute to Knoppix for producing such a quality assembly of open source software in such a useful form.

Sweet. brltty support

[gmhowell]

A bit unusual, but knoppix has included brltty support from their live CD. That, quite frankly, is cool as shit. Props to the coders, and the fanboys who keep 'em coding.

(brltty is a driver that allows text to be output to braille displays, typically used by the blind and the deaf-blind. Read my journal for a little bit more info.)

Virtual Knoppix

[bucky0]

Hey, I thought of a cool idea, I don't know how practical it would be though.

Include a virtualisation program(s) which would let you run knoppix in a virtual machine. Then, you don't have to reboot PC's, you just plug in the CD, have it autoplay(or manually run it) and nearly instantly, the linux system boots up.

Is there anything that would be difficult about that?

Re:They dropped support for x586

[phr4gmonk3y]

There's at least one good reason to keep support. Servers. I have an old (read: OLD.) hp pavillion I managed to get a hold of and I didn't want to use the hard drive because of some issues. So... wouldn't it be great to use knoppix with all of it's available tools to create say... a web server? Knoppix has apache btw.

Polish?

[Feztaa]

My biggest gripe with 3.2 was very petty; it was simply a matter of polish. Version 3.2 was the first to incorporate X 4.3, and the knoppix guys had done no work with the mouse cursors, so what happens was that X was trying to use the whiteglass cursors, the fancy png-based ones with 16-bit alpha. Though, when you moused over certain widgets, the mouse would revert to the screwy 2-bit mouse cursors that the knoppix guys made for 3.1 (1 bit for alpha, 1 bit for color).

It was kind of annoying, but other than that knoppix itself was great (in fact, it came in handy when my HD fried and it took me a week to replace it, knoppix was the only distro I could use... otherwise, my PC would have been a paperweight).

Of course I can't get to the changelog, it's slashdotted. I'll have to wait for the download to finish so I can boot it.

Re:Why?

[hdparm]

It denies you root access

Try Ctrl+Alt+F2. Replace F2 with F5 to get back to GUI screen.

After you get it, Help Advertise Knoppix.

[HanzoSan]

All of you slashdotters need to join forces for once and lets bring Knoppix to the masses. Lets right now go to all the popular websites which seem game related or tech related and tell them to download Knoppix.

An even better idea is for Redhat or one of these big Linux companies to do the right thing and create a live CD and give it away for free AOL style, I'm sure if millions of these CDs were given away by all the Linux Distro companies you'd get hundreds of thousands of new Linux users.

Re:Why?

[Tommy Boomfiger]

I just happened to download 3.2 a couple of hours ago just out of curiosity, the mirror i got it from didnt have 3.3 yet. Until now i have been mostly a windows user with a little bit of mac osx under my belt, never really used any *nix before. I have to say, this is an awesome way to try out linux without having to actually install and configure it.
The reason I havent tried linux before is mostly because I didnt really have time for it, and when i did, i didnt want to spend it in front of a computer. I mean i bought that ps2 for more than collecting dust. So after just playing around with knoppix a little bit i love it and will be using it more and when i get more time ill move on to something more permanent.
so to answer you question, you should try it on your "reliable good old XP Home Edition" box to see that there is more than just windows out there. Plus when that windows install craps out on you, you can boot up a knoppix disc and be online in minutes.

Re:Why?

[Peaceful_Patriot]

Why not use Knoppix as a desktop system? I have a persistant directory which stores my files and configs. I can really stretch the space on my little toshiba laptop with a great os and software which takes no hd space.

Re:Unfortunately

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Having Knoppix with Windows XP is like having a spare bicycle tire for your car."

Can't say I agree with that. If XP is infected with a worm or something, and you can't risk getting on line with it, then you can boot into Knoppix. and find the patch/fix you need. Then, when you go to reboot, unplug the network cable and run the patch. Problem fixed.

I had my computer lose power in the middle of a shutdown process once. Win2k was busy updating the registry and hadn't closed the file when the power went. Doh. If I had Knoppix then, I could have gotten online long enough to find out if there was a fix. Or, better yet, I could have done some disk cleanup in order to reinstall Windows. Oh well.

Spare bicycle tire? I think not. Linux is not my favorite OS, but Knoppix would have saved my butt a couple of times.

Re:Not to ruin the mood...

[Kingsly]

If the bill passes a lot of these sites could be forced to shutdown due to some stupid patent or the other. Atleast future innovation would be greatly hampered. And the page being like it is .. makes sure anyone getting to the site actually reads the stuff.. people might ignore smaller links/notices like they ignore banner ads! The protests have been successful in that it has made the lawmakers do a rethink... now it only remains to see what happens tomorrow(wednesday).

Re:Hardware Support...networking

[mabhatter654]

as a network tech...

I happen to know for fact that Knoppix [3.2] works with the 3Com USB/ethernet networking dongle! That is an absolute lifesaver when you have PCs with no/broken nics. The ability to at least capture work from a borked HDD is worth it's weight in gold [ok it's a CD..that's not very much]

Re:Jesus

[Anonymous Coward]

Just in case you didn't know:
HIGHMEM in linux is memory above 4GB!
HIGHMEM in DOS is memory above 640kb.

Re:worked for me today

[Malcontent]

The only problem with the knoppix installer is that it installs everything. I would like to choose the packages I want install.

Knoppix and Laks Watch Sav ed Me

[rossz]

Actually, it saved my wife. The hard drive in her laptop died. Normally, there's a 3 year warranty on them, but Hewlett-Packard being the cheap fucktards that they are OEMed the drive and reduced the warranty to 1 year. So my 15 month old drive is useless. Oops, I digress.

Money is rather tight, so I wasn't able to get a replacement drive immediately. However, my wife needed internet access at the minimum. Knoppix to the rescue. She was able to get full blown internet access and email. With the addition of my Laks watch with its 128Meg of memory, she had a persistent home directory so her settings (e.g. bookmarks) weren't lost.

I definately feel Knoppix was worth the money I spent on it. Oh wait! It was free! Damn. Such a deal! Seriously. Keep a Knoppix CD handy at all times. Its a life saver.

Knoppix as a diagnostic tool

[grolschie]

I have been fixing a computer that shows all the signs of a stuffed motherboard. Tested RAM and PSU, cpu seems fine. The machine running XP has started to lockup when left for more than 2 minutes. Nothing dodgy installed. Drivers and stuff all sweet. Everything looks peachy on the XP install. The system only started locking up a months ago, and lockups are increasingly more frequent. Temps are fine also. No viruses. Patches, bios and drivers all up-to-date.

I was so damn sure it was a crook motherboard until I threw in a Knoppix 3.2 cd. I opened nearly every app I could at once, and left Pingus and other things runnng over night. No freezes! I could not get Knoppix to crash this system no matter what I played with.

Solution: format c:

Re:DVD Knoppix?

[Bios_Hakr]

Tha main problem with a DVD version is that it'd take too long to boot. They already use a lot of compression to get 2GB of stuff onto a 700MB CD. Going up to a DVD would slow down the load times and make it inconvenient.

On a side note, we use Knoppix in our Internet Boutique. We have one server booting off a CD and then the stations boot via PXE from the server. At the end of the day, the last one out flips the main circuit-breaker and all the machines go dark. In the morning, the server comes on automatically and the clients come up when we push the power buttons. No fsck, no worry about configurations. An added benifit is that if anyone tries to seize our machines for forensic analasys, we can point out that none of them have a hard drive to analyze.

Flat screen support?

[thallgren]

I downloaded Knoppix 3.3 and booted it. The gfx "textmode" worked just fine, and the audio also. However, the graphics looked scrambled on my flat screen. I connect it via DVI to my GForce 4 Ti4200.

I'd like a cure for this problem. :)

I recall I had the same problem with Red Hat 8, but that was quite some time ago.

Re:worked for me today

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't "dpkg-reconfigure locales" do the trick too?

Re:flaming debian-legal list=legal issues?

[glwtta]

I am pretty sure Xine doesn't decrypt DVDs "out of the box" - you have to install that "plugin" yourself (at least that was the case when I used it a while ago, might've changed).

Sure it's a trivial distiction, but logic isn't really part of the current digital copyright system.

Re:Knoppix still king of bootable CDs

[quigonn]

The last time I talked to Klaus Knopper, he said that basically he does all the development. I might well be that one or another component has been contributed, but the main work on the actual Knoppix CD is his work. Of course, a support crew is also very important for a project, but that's another story.

BTW: did you know that Klaus Knopper got several threats on his answering machine when Knoppix was enclosed to a computer magazine, and severel readers of this computer magazine who tried out Knoppix accused Knoppix of destroying their computers [sic!].