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Klaus Knopper, Creator of Knoppix Talks to DistroWatch 201

Posted by Hemos from the good-things-small-packages dept.
An anonymous reader wrote to us about an interview with Klaus Knopper the author/creator of Knoppix. 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. "
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Klaus Knopper, Creator of Knoppix Talks to DistroWatch More

Klaus Knopper, Creator of Knoppix Talks to DistroWatch

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  • Distribution... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by whiteranger99x ( 235024 ) on Monday November 18, 2002 @12:59PM (#4698724) Journal
    If I may ask, what made you decide to base this distribution on Debian [debian.org] as opposed to something like Slackware, RedHat, or even a Build Your Own Linux [linuxfromscratch.org] Distribution?

    In other words, was there any redeeming factors Debian had over any other distribution?

    • This is a link to an interview, not an Ask Slashdot. But worth a shot - maybe he'll answer it.

      --
      Evan "dern slashdotted interview..."

    • if we've said it once, we've said it a thousand times...apt ;-)

      -frozen

    • The problem with LFS is that after installing some 100 packages, you'll have a big mess because you don't know which file belongs to which package. Upgrading of packages is difficult, uninstalling is impossible.


      I've tried SuSE, LFS and Debian (in this order) and I have good reasons not to change my distro again.

    • In other words, was there any redeeming factors Debian had over any other distribution?

      I can't speak for Klaus, but I do know why if I were trying to do something similar I'd start with Debian:

      • Source code is available for everything in Debian, including the utilities used to produce the official distribution CDs.
      • Debian is a multi-lingual distribution, with an active translation team. Knoppix defaults to German.
      • It is legal to redistribute everything in both Debian proper and in the non-free supplement.
      • With 11 (and counting) supported architectures Debian is the most portable GNU/Linux distribution. If someone wants a non-x86 CD much difficult trailblazing is already there.
      • Anybody with technical chops can be a Debian developer. (Klaus maintains the cloop-src and cloop-utils packages.)
      • Sid (Debian "Unstable") is updated daily, making it easy to get the latest packages.

      Sure, other distros have most of these things. But Debian is the only one with all of them.

    • If I was going to create a distribution, I'd probably base it on Debian.

      If you base your distribution off a comercial Linux the people who created the base distro will view you as competition and say bad things about you to the press.

      The Debian development process is completely open and is garaunteed to stay that way. If you want, you can probably merge some code in the upstream source and save time.

    • As others have said, apt apt at.
      Ok , Granted Apt is *slowly* starting to become a sorta-reality on non .deb distros, but it's core to debian these days.

      The beauty of itis, I used the knx-hdinstall to install knoppix on my hard drive. Chucked in a sources.list file to point it at the local uni debian repository, typed in apt-get update then apt-get upgrade and *bLaMO!* --> all the latest updates to the packages just sorta turn up.

      Mandrake is red hat based, but you cant point it to red hat. Nor Red hat to mandrake. Neither to debian. But any debian based distro can (in theory) be pointed to deb.

      Too easy huh?
      • Long ago, yes, mandrake was based on redhat. this is simply not the case now. I think what you mean is mandrake is RPM based.

        Mandrake is quite a different animal now, but it does share the same package system. You are right, though, in that sometimes you can't use a redhat rpm to install on mandrake, but 99% of the time that is false.

  • Autodetection (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CableModemSniper ( 556285 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .odlapacnagol.> on Monday November 18, 2002 @12:59PM (#4698726) Homepage Journal
    I love the way he says he designed the hardware autodetection. He just made a list of al the steps you do to setup a linux install's hardware and automated it and threw in some kudzu. Genius.

    • In other news... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Fefe ( 6964 )
      the GNU project was shut down, because everything they ever did was merely automating a few well known steps from computer science books.

      If you think doing it is so trivial, where is your live CD?

      It's always easy to talk down on the work of others. But it's not very convincing unless you have own work to show.

      • Whoa. Where did that come from? I was COMPLIMENTING the guy. *I* certainly never would have thought of that. It makes so much sense, its one of those duh, why didn't I think of that things. I was applauding Mr. Knopper. Sorry if it came out the wrong way.

        Here to make this perfectly clear: Good job Klaus Knopper. I wish I had Mr. Knopper's insight.

  • Wonderful Dist (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18, 2002 @01:00PM (#4698729)
    I have been wanting a linux dist to use on an NT 4.0 box, and this one has been great. I pop the CD in and (Ta-Da) its a linux box. I then SAMBA mount my other computer and life it good. It allows me to work in linux without messing with my NT 4 environment so I can use it when needed.
    Thanks.
  • to try it out. Haven't come round to it yet, but it might be very useful to play those movies on any system anywhere, granted this hardware detection and video card support is as good as it should be.
    • If all you want to use this for is playing all sorts of movies, Movix [sf.net] is what you want. I tried it out a few weeks back, and now am actively "movixing" all my unburnt DivXs.

      Checkout the home page. In short, its a small (~5MB) linux distribution designed to be booted from a CD, with autodetection of video and audio, and automatically plays all the media files placed in the root directory of the CD. It uses Mplayer [mplayerhq.hu] to play the movies, so all formats supported by mplayer [mplayerhq.hu] (pratically everything!!) are supported by movix. All u do is put your "movixed" cd in ur drive, reboot, and watch the movie...all the software for playing it is right there on the disk.

      I have a laptop with a 250MHz processor, and Movix is the only way i can play Divx on it without dropping frames or loosing audio sync.

      LinuxGhoul

  • License (Score:5, Informative)

    by kaosrain ( 543532 ) <root@kaosr a i n .com> on Monday November 18, 2002 @01:03PM (#4698777) Homepage
    Not mentioned in the Slashdot article, but most of the software in the Knoppix package is released under the GPL, and Knoppix itself is completely free. This is one of the reasons that this Linux bootdisk is such a big deal.

    -Kaos

    • Re:License (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Ari Rahikkala ( 608969 )
      You know, I was going to comment on this with something like "Well, it's Linux and the software in it is the same we all use - Mozilla, xfree86, KDE, et friends, and its maker doesn't do tech support. What else would it be but free?"... Then I remembered that a better comment would be "Holy mother of God and her bastard son! You can get two gigabytes of really good, up-to-date, reliable software for free, with no strings attached, and it all works when you just pop in a CD! FOSS is something that doesn't need to be believed in, it's already proven itself..."

  • Knoppix for installfests... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Traicovn ( 226034 ) on Monday November 18, 2002 @01:05PM (#4698798) Homepage
    Our linux users group [bullylug.org] was introduced to Knoppix by a visiting member from Germany about a year ago. Last spring we held an installfest and the knoppix cd's that we gave out were a huge hit. Best of all, it means that we were able to give out a VERY nice functional test cd that we knew had an almost zero chance of harming an individuals computer. If you have anybody who you've wanted to have try linux or has expressed an interest in linux but is nervous about putting something on the hard drive, knoppix is definitely worth burning a copy of for them.

    • Re:Knoppix for installfests... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Monday November 18, 2002 @01:17PM (#4698931) Homepage
      If there were a DVD version of Knoppix with *every* free program you could possibly want to use installed - essentially Debian testing on a DVD - then maybe you could do without ordinary Linux distributions altogether. I'd certainly consider it, if I had a PC that was left on 24x7 and important things like mail and CVS on a central server.
      • So, what do you do when you realize they've patched a critical remotely exploitable bug right after you've burned or bought your DVD? Doh!
        • First, I'd hope that Knoppix doesn't boot with any services enabled, at least none that have externally open ports. So probably there won't be too many remote exploits. Second, if these do happen then just get a new DVD - they're cheap enough to burn, and changing the disc over is probably rather easier than updating packages, especially for a non-technical user. Third, even if the machine is rooted the potential for installing rootkits on a read-only medium is somewhat limited :-).

          Seriously, you could subscribe to a Knoppix service where they mail you a new DVD once a month or so, with more frequent deliveries in the unlikely event of a serious security hole.
          • I'm not sure if this would work. First of all, you *need* to write some stuff somewhere. I assume this is done on a RAM disk. So there's your opportunity for installing root kits. :) Of course, upon reboot, everything is clean again, but so is your data. So, unless you throw in your static webpages on the DVD too, a webserver is out of the question.

            Any mail client would need configuration settings, too. You want to configure your IMAP server everytime you reboot? Granted, you may not reboot often, but then you won't wipe those root kits off your RAM disk often, neither, will you? :)

            Bookmarking in your browser is out of the question, naturally, as is customizing your environment. You might be able to store some /home stuff on a floppy drive or another such removable storage medium, though. In that case, you better make sure you eject the medium each time you leave the keyboard, since you don't want your floppy infested with root kits. :P

            I'm sure most people can live with most of the inconveniences. But in every case, you will but more limited than you will be in an environment in which you use a harddisk for storage.

            Nonetheless, there are some most excellent uses for a bootable Linux distro, of course.
            • While I tend to agree that the potential to use this for a daily-use system is limited, nothing prevents you from booting the system from DVD and mounting /dev/hda1 to /usr and /dev/hda2 to /home (or whatever). Additionally, upon boot-up the system could read a configuration script from a CD-R, patching in-place any security holes and setting up your web server, IMAP server, etc.

              If no scripts are run from the hard drive on system initialization, the potential for installing root kits is limited. What good does it do to have the root kit sitting on the hard drive if it isn't installed when the system boots?

              LIS, probably impractical for a desktop system. But certainly doable for a server.
            • If you just want dotfiles, you can use a floppy for that. Any real 'work' I do is version controlled with CVS, so I'd just need to get a checkout to ramdisk or other temporary storage.

              I'm still not saying it would be entirely practical, just that it would be so nice if it were.
      • i suppose, but then you run into the problem of needing to release a new DVD everytime month or so to catch all the version updates in that free software. Either that or fall so far behind the curve that you won't even be able to see it.

        Still, Knoppix is great for at least one thing. It gives prospective Linux users an easy way to test the waters before they dive in by partitioning my hard drive.
        • If you're going to be installing a ton of systems on the same day, it might be worth it, though, especially if the process was automatic; run a script the night before which gets the latest versions of everything, organizes it into a DVD image, and burns it. Sure, it gets out of date quickly, but it's useful once.

          It gives prospective Linux users an easy way to test the waters before they dive in by partitioning my hard drive.

          Now that's dedication; I usually make them partition their own hard drives, not mine... :)
        • You could use Jigdo [in.tum.de]. That's what Debian uses. Instead of having to actually store huge CD or DVD images on you ftp site, Jigdo downloads all each file that supposed to be on the CD/DVD and then assembles them into an image file on the users system. One of the many advantages of this is that it's easy to update your images -- just upload the new files and change the .jigdo file that specifies which files are included in the image.

          That's why Debian can distribute uptodate CD and DVD images [debian.org] of "testing" and "unstable".

  • Hardware detection (Score:5, Interesting)

    by exhilaration ( 587191 ) on Monday November 18, 2002 @01:08PM (#4698834)
    I know someone mentionned the excellent hardware detection found in Knoppix, but I'd like to know why other distributions don't have this level of simplicity? I mean, Knoppix is literally plug and play - pop it into the CD, walk away, and BAM there's KDE on the screen.

    WHY do I have to go through xf86config to get my distro up and running???? You gotta find your monitor's documentation, double-check what video card you have, look up how much memory, blah blah blah. Yet Knoppix does this AUTOMATICALLY???? (Or is that automagically?) Knoppix has been out for a while, their hardware detection should be implemented in every distribution!!

    • Re:Hardware detection-a step up. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I agree more distros should be doing this with one cavet. There should be the ability to stop and start the process so that you can decide when to let the automated process handle a piece of hardware, and when you should when it gets it wrong. Remember Windows install process sometimes "insisting" that a piece of hardware is this or that, and your fighting to change it's mind?
      • What you describe sounds like Knoppix "Cheat Codes". These are simply parameters that can be entered at boot time to disable problematic detection of a particular component. So far, the only thing I've seen any problem detecting correctly has been CardBus on certain laptops.
    • I have used knoppix and have tried several other linux distro's in the past. I have to agree that the hardware detection is awsome. What I don't understand, and maybe someone can help me out here, is why distributions that are several years more mature are much more complicated to configure than knoppix. I understand that more advanced users would want the extra flexability but I truly believe linux would be more popular if the popular distro's all auto-configured as easily as knoppix. The only thing I have used that is close is the Mandrake install, and even that has some serious problems IMHO. Also I have seen short tutorials on installing knoppix to a hd but it seems a lot of people are trying knoppix out, maybe someone out there should right a true tutorial or maybe a util to install it to the hd automatically. It is still just a bit above my level.
      • There already is a way to do this. I cannot remember where I the acually article was written, but I read a debianplanet.org news item that pointed to an article about how to use knoppix as an install cd. I've tried it and it worked pretty good. I was going to track the URL of the article down for you but debinaplanet.org is not loading right now??? Anyway, drop by debian planet and one of the news items on the front page points to the article.

        -Jeff
      • Somebody has, and I'm grateful:

        http://www.freenet.org.nz/misc/knoppix-install.h tm l

        the essence of it is "knx-hdinstall"

    • not really linux (Score:5, Funny)

      by mgkimsal2 ( 200677 ) on Monday November 18, 2002 @01:40PM (#4699173) Homepage
      Obviously, Knoppix isn't really Linux if it does stuff for you automatically. As we all know, the only reason to use Linux is to have something to kill hours or days with while configuring arcane text files with no *understandable* documentation. By having this system just boot up and work, they've taken away the "Linuxness" of Linux itself. This is just a pale imitation of the Real Thing(tm).
      • If you want to kill hours or days configuring arcane text files, you're going to have to install on a hard drive. This is as close as you can get to read Linux without persistant storage, and they had to sacrifice unusability to meet this requirement. On the other hand, you can use Knoppix to boot the computer and get on the network so you can install stuff on the hard drive without having an installer getting in the way of editting your config files.

        And, honestly, I think it's kind of nice to let you use emacs under X to edit your XF86Config. I mean, once it's all set up, that's what you'd use, right?
    • Either because your prefered distro sucks, or because you haven't done an install in over 2 years.
    • I agree with you. Just last night I was trying to install Peanut Linux on an old Packard Bell 133Mhz, 48 MB RAM machine and configuring video display is a nightmare. I was up till 3 AM trying to configure it (selecting different options) but with no avail. Tried every different option from the manual and other listed options. Nothing works yet. Then I thought of trying out Knoppix (which I already use on my other machine 24/7 running squid-proxy, ssh and other stuff) and it came up without a hitch. Atleast now I know that the monitor and video card is usable with linux, just have to figure out what would be the right settings. I am gonna dig more and see if I can find settings used by Knoppix and then use the same with Peanut Linux (I am still a newbie :). I can't run Knoppix on this because it is a little slow and I need GUI.
      Only one thing is needed from Knoppix now: A stable install on HDD.

      - Jalil Vaidya.
    • I know someone mentionned the excellent hardware detection found in Knoppix, but I'd like to know why other distributions don't have this level of simplicity?

      Umm, well they do mostly. Try installing Redhat 8 or Suse 8 for instance. It's all automatic. I didn't have to tell it anything about my hardware as far as I remember. I think you've been trying the wrong distros.

  • wow, how neat... (Score:2, Informative)

    by caino59 ( 313096 )
    SuSE has had this for a while, what they call the Live CD. I believe they had them with the all the 7.x distros. And yes, it's available [www.suse.de] over at their site [suse.com].

    Yea, I know SuSE isnt availble free to d/l anymore, but I still like the distro quite a bit...

    Can't get to the original article either, anyone have a mirror? I would like to read it ;oP

    I do like the fact that Knoppix can deal with 2GB
    of data due to on-the-fly-compression...and since it's running off a cd anyway, I'm sure it won't make a big performance difference...

    caino

    Don't touch my .sig there!

    • Re:wow, how neat... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm sure it won't make a big performance difference...

      The performance hit is barely noticable. Many of the programs load up just as fast as my 'real' Debian system on the same computer. What is amazing is that if you're lucky and the desktop loads without any tweaking, the time from boot up to usable KDE/GNOME/etc. is about the same (faster?) as my 'real' debian system.
    • I know SuSE isnt availble free to d/l anymore, but I still like the distro quite a bit...

      say what? [suse.com]

      no isos, but ftp. that's the only install method I ever use. Set up, start, get lunch, come back, do the final set up, viola. Most other distros work similarly, I guess (or hope).

  • Slashdot's new motto: (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    News for nerds. Stuff that OSNews has already mentioned.

  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Best rescue tool kit I've used and, by a long shot, best Linux advocacy material I've seen so far.


      What's the command to use the CD as a bootdisk ??

      I tried 'vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1' and 'knoppix root=/dev/hda1' at the boot: prompt as I would with a normal boot floppy, but without any luck.

      I know it should be trivial, but I haven't guessed it yet.

  • An excellent idea! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ivanandre ( 265129 ) <ivan.tamayo@gmai ... om minus painter> on Monday November 18, 2002 @01:20PM (#4698959) Journal
    This distro sure borns as a "demo" distro, but ive used it extensively and it rocks! Some of its uses are:
    • Put on a friends computer and show him/her the power of Linux and free software without modyfing his computer!
    • Boot a PC and figure out if the hardware its supported
    • Secure server? (Who can write in the cd?)


    I think the best point is that is Debian-based... and the hardware detection and configuration is awesome! Sure the debian guys can learn a bit... Free Software does not means impossible software, Knoppix!
    • As far as using a cd as a secure server, it is very cool, though I would recommend you build your own and use something like bblcd [bablokb.de] where you have more control over what's going on.

      A bunch of things have to go into a ramdisk to be usable on a run-from-cd distro. That stuff can be altered, and the part you lose is the logs written to harddisk, which is kinda handy to have if something happens.

      anyway, it is neat to do. bblcd is easy if you read the directions. knoppix is neat and i gave it out to my students so they could keep their windows machines for their other classes, though the chance of them ever seeing debian in their future jobs is slim to none, and seeing Red Hat only slightly more likely (which is what the class was taught on).

      --mandi

      • Even better: Modify bblcd to write the logs to a line printer. Now try and see if you can modify the logs. Of course you will have a lot of paper flying around depending on your verbosity preferences :-)
    • Actually, to show a friend the power of linux, the gentoo live cd with UT2003 [ibiblio.org]
      leaves more people impressed.

      Yes, this is a live CD and yes, you put it in and it boots into UT2003, and yes, you can play over the internet with this. No. no installation required.

  • Knoppix is a great Linux Ambassador (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DoctorPepper ( 92269 ) on Monday November 18, 2002 @01:21PM (#4698981)
    I was introduced to Knoppix about a month and a half ago by a friend of mine in Texas (USA). Since then, I've burned several CD-R's and distributed them to other friends and acquaintances who are curious about Linux, but didn't want to "mess with" their Windows computers.

    I think Knoppix is an excellent distro and a great way to introduce people to Linux. I'm thinking about infiltrating our local computer user's group (all Windows users) and seeing if I can hand-out some Knoppix CD's :-)

  • Knoppix installs full Debian system on Harddrive! (Score:5, Informative)

    by abcho ( 320284 ) on Monday November 18, 2002 @01:27PM (#4699044)
    The usefulness of Knoppix goes far beyond demo.

    It already can serve as a Debian installation CD - and is arguably THE EASIEST Debian distro to install.

    LinuxWorld has an article about this capability: here [linuxworld.com]

    The Knoppix-as-Debian-install-cd howto: here [freenet.org.nz]

    • I tried this on the weekend. Everything was going beautifully till I was informed my 1900mb partition didn't cut it. Yes, that's right, the HD install off the single KNOPPIX CD requires 2200MB free! Which is too bad -- KNOPPIX is the only distribution I've seen that autodetected all my hardware (particularly my Asound NIC) -- and that includes Mandrake 9 and RedHat 8 (RedHat didn't even properly setup the awe driver for my SB64).

      I was blown away when I first saw KNOPPIX, and immediately went around throwing the CD into all my 98/XP-using friends' machines.
    • Cool! I will have to inflict this on my brother's dying ME-based Gateway when it arrives from CheapBytes. My 56K modem can't handle downloading that iso.

      Wonder if it will handle my other brother's dying Dell laptop with such aplomb? Worth a try I guess.
    • We use Knoppix here for a Linux kiosk.

      It is unbelievable!

      You just need one CD. plug it in the server, use a floppy with the MAC addresses of the clients and server ip. DONE! 15 PCs (with different hardware!!) here boot from a single CD in the server, no setup, no nothing, it just works. Nobody can fuck up the system, no hackers, no kiddies in the kiosk. It's amazing. Zero maintanence.

  • Brief review of Knoppix (Score:4, Informative)

    by markcappel ( 610263 ) on Monday November 18, 2002 @01:41PM (#4699195)
    Yes, yes, I'm the editor of LinuxWorld [linuxworld.com] and hence I have an obvious motive for saying this, but here is a link to a recent, fabulous, well-written review [linuxworld.com] of Knoppix, and it's place in the Debian world.

    Mark Cappel
    Editor
    LinuxWorld

  • Hardware auto-detection is obviously a major step in bringing linux to the masses. I don't think it can be underestimated (although I understand when people like the more hands-on approach, I'm a gentoo lover, myself.) I've been hearing more and more about Knoppix recently. Gnumed, an open source medical practice management solution project that i'm following is using it as a demo cd. Since Knoppix is customizable, I was wondering how many people have tried creating their "own" OS-on-cd. Computers are everywhere, so it would seem practical to have your own customized operating system and personal desktop on cd. Forget dealing with how other people set up their computers and just throw in your own cd. hmmm, i'm getting excited now. how cool would it be to whip out one of those credit card shaped cd's from your wallet, and amaze your friends.
    • how cool would it be to whip out one of those credit card shaped cd's from your wallet, and amaze your friends.

      What about an ordinary CD and one of those tiny storage devices that you plug to a USB port (where you keep all the data you'll work on)! (I could work on my phd thesis anywhere, without the need to be connected all the time Hmm... This is getting really interesting!
      8-)

  • Great for demonstrations (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Knoppix CD is great for demonstrating "the other way of life" to Windows users. I carry two discs with me at all times - one for demos to friends, neighbors and associates, one to give away.

    Has many programs and games for newbies.

    Notes:

    Need 80 megs of memory to run the KDE desktop or it will use a minimal windows manager (fvwm?)(not good if you are trying to win hearts and minds used to the Windows environment).

    Has Open Office - runs slow off the CD - needs to be explained - otherwise a great demo disk.

    It can be installed too !!!
    Instructions at http://www.freenet.org.nz/misc/knoppix-install.htm l

    • You could try some to use one of the other small and fast desktops. WindowMaker is available (desktop=wmaker) and ICWM (desktop=icwm) is too. Just dont do TWM (desktop=twm) unless you want to show them 'how it used to be'

      Keith
    • Has Open Office - runs slow off the CD - needs to be explained - otherwise a great demo disk

      This is a serious question: can you get Open Office to run fast when it's installed? I've never managed to get OOo to start up in less than 30secs or so on a reasonably (cel 500mhz) fast PC, and it's one of the reasons why I generally don't use it (stupid reason perhaps, but it really gets to me)

      Is this unusual? Can it start faster? (short of recompiling - I notice LFS has details on the OOo compile: 2hrs on a faster PC and way more harddisk space than I've got to play with)

  • A customizable survival kit! (Score:3, Informative)

    by WanderingGhost ( 535445 ) on Monday November 18, 2002 @01:55PM (#4699377)
    Knoppix is excellent as a demo distro, as an easy way to install Debian, but it's also a wonderful survival kit. When you're at a relative's (or friend's) house, you can take your Knoppix CD and a floppy (for the data). You can then hack&compile your projects, write documents (w/docbook or LaTeX). No need to ask them to install Emacs or anything else in their box.
    And the nice part is that it's customizable [gnome.org]! You can change the packages that go in the CD using apt-get (but you'll need 3 Gb of disk space for that!) I think I'll compile and include the PCTEL driver... It's one thing I'll really need! :-)

    But do as the article says: modify it after booting from the KNOPPIX CD. It uses a special compressed-loop module (available from knoppix.net [knopper.net]); the problem is that its stability seems to depend on which modules were compiled into the kernel [debian.org], and the kernel from the CD is known to work fine. I've tried to compile the cloop module for my kernel, but things didn't work (cp -a stalls).

  • Knoppix is my home MP3 player (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gosand ( 234100 ) on Monday November 18, 2002 @02:06PM (#4699517)
    I have Knoppix running on an old Dell PII-233 as my MP3 player. I took out the hard drive, so it only runs on CD. I put in a 6-channal audio card hooked into the stereo and a video card w/TV-out (auto-detected, way cool). I run GNUMP3D on my Linux server, and now I can play all my MP3s through my stereo in the living room using the knoppix distro as the front end. (the wired keyboard/mouse isn't that elegant, I might get a wireless one eventually). The nice part is that it is pretty much silent when not in use.

  • Great use for Knoppix (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zer0vector ( 94679 ) on Monday November 18, 2002 @02:07PM (#4699520)
    I am taking a Computational Physics class, and the professor prefers to use Linux for its ease in compiling and running programs. Unfortunately the only computer lab available was filled with windows machines, so we just boot the Knoppix CDs everytime we start class. Its fast and very easy to set up.
  • From the article:
    Some people (including me) are using Knoppix when shopping for a new computer. If the hardware is working fine and is all detected by Knoppix, the computer should be ready to run any brand of Linux.

    What a wonderful idea! I can see that this would make choosing a laptop much easier. No more guessing if the manufacturer added any weird proprietary stuff that Linux won't recognize. How many stores out there would let you do this though?
  • Me, and everyone I've shown it to, was simply blown away by Knoppix. And the deeper you look, the more impressed you are:

    * On the surface, it's just a perfectly user-friendly demo disk. Power on, CD in, KDE up. Now you may or may not like KDE (I don't like it), but it gives an instant "slick" interface that can easily hold its own against the whole windos world.

    * Then you realize it had a full-blown hardware autodetection, that works incredibly well - I've yet to see a machine where it doesn't come up fully automated and well-configured.

    * It also includes everything you need to go online, no matter what your connection is. It does DHCP, PPP, ISDN (very common in Germany), PPPoE for the ADSL people, even wireless if you want.

    * Then you start to wonder how all this stuff (900 packages, including all of OpenOffice, KOffice, more than a dozen small games, etc.) fits on the CD, and you learn that the guy wrote a compressed loop kernel module and everything is transparently decompressed when it's read from the CD!

    * Finally, it's 100% GPL. All of it is Free Software tools bolted together intelligently.

    • "* On the surface, it's just a perfectly user-friendly demo disk. Power on, CD in, KDE up. Now you may or may not like KDE (I don't like it), but it gives an instant "slick" interface that can easily hold its own against the whole windos world."

      Don't forget the desktop= option at the boot menu. My P1 laptop can just barely handle KDE, so I make sure to use desktop=icewm. There's also (*checks*) gnome, icewm, fluxbox, xfce, wmaker, and twm, plus runlevel 2 (text mode). That's directly from the boot help menu.
  • I give out these cds like AOL cds :)
  • I've been using Knoppix since it was mentioned on Slashdot earlier in the year and have found it very useful as a tool explain what linux can do to people who have not see it before.

    A couple of my friends are Windows Admins and I've managed to corrupt them enough to consider Knoppix as part of their tool kit, after all you can boot it, configure a network link and copy data off of the harddisk to a remote server if the normal OS will not boot.

    One of them has also used it to demostrate linux using a sony laptop and a projector at our local computer club [boxoffrogs.org.uk]. This meant he could show Openoffice opening Word and Excel files, Gimp and Internet access thus showing that Linux does make a viable desktop replacement.

    t

  • The fact that he complained that you couldn't eject a mounted CD with your root FS on it just kills me.
  • I use it on Dells a lot, however on systems that don't have boot roms. An Etherboot server would be nice ;) Basically I use knoppix for getting random computers on the network. Formatting the hard drive and unpacking my prebuilt .tgz with everything already in it. Reboot, pop the cd and I've got a fully functional file server ready for production use in about 1 hour. Norton Ghost? We don't need no steenkin Norton Ghost!!
  • Will someone please make one of these that just boots to the seti client? Instant, non-destructive, painless borging!

    Move along. No content to see here.
  • Let me chime in with "Knoppix is great!" I used it just the other day to get info off a scrozzed WindowsME system before I wiped it.

    Something I'd like to see:

    . Self-customizing: Run a script that saves all settings and then generates an custom Knoppix ISO.

    . Using the custom ISO, you could boot, automatically mount samba/nfs shares, load up favorites, mount /home, etc...

  • (and I'm not mad about it)

    I have burned several Knoppix CDs for friends from my hard drive to my rather pokey internal CD-RW drive. However, since that's also a primary drive for me, I did not want to overtax it, and I now I will me making many more, so ...

    I bought a CD burner on sale from Target (for those outside the Target area, har har, see www.target.com -- large American retail chain, for the last few years has been working on its image as a modern general store up the totem pole from Wal-Mart). Then, burner unopened, I decided to trade it in when I saw they had a *duplicator* for $250. It's only one-source-to-one-target (not a fancy thing with internal drive or 16 target trays), but can copy a full CD in about 5 minutes. (Perhaps they do in some areas, but I've never seen CompUSA or such stores to carry duplicators -- I find it a strange but nice decision on target's part to stock them.)

    The drive is the 2nd generation (they were clearing out the 1st gen recently, I wish I had bought one of those instead), and though it has the currently popular "crystal black" look, I wish the top were not swoopy, so I could rest other things on it, which is perhaps the designers' point, but hey.

    e3works.com -- if you want to see it. bad site, though.

    Now: does anyone know how to make this drive work with Linux? I have tried two other external USB drives with Linux, and they have Just Worked with recent distros, Debian / Red hat / Mandrake. This one does not -- for instance, running cdrecord -scanbus does not find the drive. Yes, I have it switched to the "USB drive" mode rather than the Duplication mode. Anyone have tips? :)

    timothy
    • Thanks for that link!! I'll probably hafta go out and buy one today now, ya big so-and-so... (/me grumbles about not having a job and no income)

      --As for getting it to work with Linux, since it's USB 2.0 try:

      # For USB 2.0:
      modprobe ehci-hcd
      # For USB 1.1:
      modprobe usb-ohci
      modprobe usb-storage

      --You can also try ' modprobe ' for: sr_mod, usb-storage, usb-ohci, ehci-hcd, sg, sd_mod, scsi_mod

      --I dunno tho, you might have to use a SCSI Generic device with cdrecord. Pop a disk in one of the drives and see if you can mount it on /dev/sgX or /dev/sdX.
  • I have burned ~8 copies of this for folks around here, used it to save some data off a friends new laptop (XP home) when it decided to eat itself.

    I literally don't leave home without it.

    I also did an install off the CD, and then just did an "apt-get update" ... Made me wanna cry tears of joy... Well. maybe not tears, but major warm fuzzies in any case.

    Kudos to Mr, Knopper!!!

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