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Debian Software Linux

Knoppix 3.3 Is Out 430

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.
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Knoppix 3.3 Is Out

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  • DVD Knoppix? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Comsn ( 686413 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:03PM (#7030680)
    when will the dvd knoppix be released?

    and start including mplayer on these cds ;\
    • Re:DVD Knoppix? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jasonditz ( 597385 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @12:00AM (#7031026) Homepage
      I asked Klaus about mplayer support a long time ago, and he basically said there was no point since most of the codecs are non-free.
    • Is this [freshmeat.net] the kind of thing you're looking for?

    • Re:DVD Knoppix? (Score:4, Informative)

      by mabhatter654 ( 561290 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @12:49AM (#7031226)
      The Knoppix DVD was a special one-time-only deal for LinuxTag in germany. There are places you can get it online [extra copies] and if someone is willing, you could download it.

      Mostly, it's to hard for the One Guy [Klaus Knopper] and a couple friends to keep up more than 1 offical version. So for quality-sake, they don't do that, and try to keep one version they can test throughly and do a really GREAT JOB on! It's better that way.

    • Re:DVD Knoppix? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Bios_Hakr ( 68586 )
      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 aut
  • by I_am_Rambi ( 536614 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:08PM (#7030705) Homepage
    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.
    • Did you try any of the "no..." cheatcodes [knoppix.net]?
    • Interesting, I have an Nvidia GeForce 2 with an Intel chipset.

      If I boot off Knoppix, as soon as Linux reaches the X-windows stage, my monitor goes into some power-saving mode and I cannot turn it back on (Yes, I know how to work around this, but it's annoying).

      But I'm sure this is an X bug (It happens with the RedHat installer also, and I think it happens with the default Debian X setup). I have an old monitor (Decaview V385), so I never gave it much thought.

      Is this what you experienced?
      • I'm pretty sure it's a different problem.

        People with nForce2 chipsets (motherboard chipsets, not video) had problems running Knoppix 3.2. I haven't tried the new Knoppix yet.
  • by the_2nd_coming ( 444906 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:10PM (#7030721) Homepage
    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.
  • Dammit! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kethinov ( 636034 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:10PM (#7030724) Homepage Journal
    Dammit! I just burned a 3.2 CD on a nonrewritable disk! GRRR
  • by jdawg ( 21639 ) <jmf.mac@com> on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:13PM (#7030743) Homepage
    http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~koppen/knoppix-en.to rrent

    That's for the English image. V3.3-2003-09-22.
  • worked for me today (Score:4, Informative)

    by jab ( 9153 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:14PM (#7030751) Homepage
    I installed Knoppix 3.2 this morning on an FIC E-Cube, in all its blue glowing glory. The biggest change to my eye is easier access to Knoppix-specific configuration; that now has its own root menu on the task bar. I also like the new desktop wallpaper which looks like an industrial cave painting. For some reason today's Knoppix didn't see hyperthreaded Pentium 4 as an SMP machine, which Knoppix 3.2 had no problem recognizing. Other than that, no real problems. I went ahead and used Knoppix as installer for Debian - this is definitely my preferred way to install Linux these days.
  • Get it in Canada (Score:5, Informative)

    by millette ( 56354 ) <robin@@@millette...info> on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:14PM (#7030757) Homepage Journal

    If you don't have access to a good pipe, you can always order it from Nattor the Little CD Vendor:
    http://www.waglo.com/nattor/ [waglo.com]

    P.S.: don't complain that my sig is redundant - someone probably has them turned off. Thanks :)

    • Odd; I don't think your page would render right in Konqueror - at least it doesn't in OmniWeb, which uses the WebCore engine, which is based on KHTML.
      • Maybe that's why I can't see how to order anything.
      • Hum, doesn't Safari use the same engine? A friend said it was ok - unless you mean the blue copyright bar at the bottom? That's a bug in the page, I'll get around to fixing it soon.

        Otherwise, I'm curious: how is it displaying improperly?

        Nobody with konqueror mentionned anything before either, which is either good or bad depending on how you want to see it :)

  • I have one of those USB memory keychain things (pretty cool stuff).

    How can I create a persistant home directory on it?

    I love Knoppix, and this was my big gripe.
  • by The Revolutionary ( 694752 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:16PM (#7030772) Homepage Journal
    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?
  • by proxima ( 165692 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:19PM (#7030786)
    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.

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

      That's Klaus Knopper. And AFAIK, only Klaus Knopper (except for the installer, which is contributed).
  • by gmhowell ( 26755 ) <gmhowell@gmail.com> on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:28PM (#7030838) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bucky0 ( 229117 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:30PM (#7030853)
    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?
  • by donnz ( 135658 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:32PM (#7030870) Homepage Journal
    Knoppix is a great marketing tool and bloody good at working out hardware and network configurations. It is surprising how often you stumble across it.

    My main problem with Knoppix is the OpenOffice install not being able to get out of English US (changing the language for spell checking in OO is a major pain even in 1.1). This is an issue when doing a quick demo of how great the GNU/Linux office tools are.
  • Jesus (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:36PM (#7030887)
    They're just now coming out with HIGHMEM [sic] support? MSDOS had HIMEM.SYS like 15 years ago. Great, now I can load my Lunix mouse driver above 640k! Thanks a bunch!
  • Polish? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Feztaa ( 633745 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:41PM (#7030923) Homepage
    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.
  • by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:57PM (#7031017) Homepage
    Does anyone know why he still includes games which require openGL acceleration (eg Chromium), when Knoppix doesn't come with any hardware-accelerated drivers (that I know of)?

    It seems to me that it will just result in thousands of introductions like this:
    "Hey cool, a 3D game! (click)
    (0.5 fps game menu displays)
    Wait, this is crap, Linux sucks!"


  • I've got a DVD burner.. I've had one for awhile now. Is there any compelling reason the Knoppix site isn't hosting the linuxtag dvd yet, or why it isn't being pushed more? The concept of being able to fit nearly anything you want on one disk, and being able to show anyone with a dvd drive the huge amount of free software available in linux would be nice..
  • Two of my friends have already grabbed a copy of the 2003-07-26 ISO image off me. One wanted the games, the other loves GIMP.

    Show Knoppix around to your friends and associates, you never know who will be intrigued enough to try it out. Watch the smile on their faces as you inform them it's free. Thanks a lot, Knopper!

    Downloading the 2003-09-22 image over 56K dialup as I speak :-)
  • by yerma ( 710023 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @12:29AM (#7031138)
    I decided, after hearing so much about Knoppix and how it could get me into using Linux without all the fuss (partitions? what? geez) I thought I'd give it a go.
    I was not impressed to say the least.
    I booted the operating system and then started work on an essay on the ontological beliefs of Heraclitus of Ephesos. First of all starting OpenOffice.org ('.org' at the end of an application name? What's with that?) took incredibly long. I could have installed my copy (yes, it's legit and paid for) of Windows Millenium Edition in the time it took to boot Knoppix and start OpenOffice.org. Anyway it was to my surprise that even though I saved this file to my 'Desktop', the next time I booted Knoppix it was nowhere to be found. So now my philosophy 521 paper was missing -- needless to say I booted into Windows Millenium Edition (where files don't just god damned disappear) and rewrote the paper, printed it (couldn't get that working in Knoppix either) and haven't looked back.
    I really like the idea of cooperation and open source software, the community idea seems really neat, and I hope these guys get their stuff together so regular guys like me can use this software at the efficiency and reliability that professional software offers.
    • by mabhatter654 ( 561290 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @01:44AM (#7031444)
      Don't ever trust something important to a program you've never used before. That's just stupid computer usage!

      Frankly, you didnt' give this nearly a fair trial. I read other posts, and you didn't take the time to even learn what Knoppix was, or how to work it before you trusted you life's work to it. Had you read up a little before jumping in, you would have learned how to do everything you wanted in about an hour. Been running from start to configured in 10 minutes, and not lost a thing! Even been able to save that file so you could open it in windows!!! Knoppix is meant to "Do no harm!' that means it doesn't write to ANYTHING without you giving it express permission...on NT boxes writing to a drive is lethal--It couldn't assume that you wanted anything saved.

      Read up at Knoppix.net! Check out the FAQs, and browse the forums for an evening before trying it out again. You might find that you'll like it!

    • by zonix ( 592337 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @05:12AM (#7032093) Journal
      Anyway it was to my surprise that even though I saved this file to my 'Desktop', the next time I booted Knoppix it was nowhere to be found.

      So, it was like ... it devoured your paper? :-)

      z
  • Hardware Support (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MalleusEBHC ( 597600 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @12:56AM (#7031263)
    I couldn't find this on the site, but how wide of a range of hardware does Knoppix support? I work as a network technician at my university, which entails a good number of calls where I must go out and troubleshoot a resident's network connection. Many a time I will run into a spot where I can nail it down to either being a problem with the OS or a problem with the NIC. For the Macs, I just use my iBook as a Firewire boot drive, however the Windows boxes prove to be somewhat of a pain. It would be a dream if I could just boot from Knoppix and be able to remove the potentially problematic OS from the equation. However, given the wide range of hardware I see out there, I wonder if a standard Knoppix setup would be able to support all the hardware I run into.
    • by mabhatter654 ( 561290 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @01:49AM (#7031478)
      Give it a try. It doesn't always work 100%, but it works most of the time. Also, read up on the Cheatcodes...They let you modify it right from the boot screen to cope with difficult hardware.

      Most PCs that can boot from a CDROM should be able to run knoppix. The only way you'll know for sure is to try it out [no harm in trying!] or to read up on specifics on the forum if there's a particular piece of hardware you know you need to support.

      Please, try it...You can't really HURT any PCs with it so it's always worth a try!

    • by mabhatter654 ( 561290 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @01:52AM (#7031499)
      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]

  • by rossz ( 67331 ) <ogre@@@geekbiker...net> on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @02:37AM (#7031695) Journal
    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.
  • by grolschie ( 610666 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @03:11AM (#7031765)
    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:
  • by pswnet ( 614841 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <gnahp.naitsirhc>> on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @03:32AM (#7031827)
    1. put the Knoppix cd, booting.... 2. open a shell 3. knx-hdinstall 4. apt-get update, apt-get upgrade 5. Bamn...You get a Debian in your Box can no be more easier. *Internet Connection is requiered.*
    • FYI (Score:5, Informative)

      by orv ( 398342 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @03:55AM (#7031883) Homepage
      From that changelog [knoppix.net]:

      "Please don't use knx-hdinstall any more!
      I won't support it any longer and its just there as uhm, its not my project, but those of Christian Perle.
      knoppix-installer should now work in both modes (see below) and give a fairly stable system. "
  • by Lerxst Pratt ( 618277 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @08:59AM (#7032968)
    Two days ago, I performed disaster recovery on a friend's Windows 2000 box. Suffice it to say that his computer would not boot into the recovery console nor would the hard drive allow me to reinstall Windows 2000 on it. Fortunately, I had a Debian Jr. [debian.org] Knoppix CD.

    I popped it in, booted up, and was ready to amaze my friend. Both his NTFS hard drive and his USB FAT32 hard drive appeared on the desktop automagically after boot. I set the USB drive to read/write by right-clicking and selecting the read/write mode. I opened both drives in two separate windows of Konqueror and performed the data recovery right before his eyes by dragging files from one drive to another.

    When the backup was complete, I showed him a few other things like the games and that he was completely internet capable. His jaw dropped in awe. He asked if I would make him a copy of the CD so that he could be internet functional on his computer until he could get a new hard drive. I told him to keep the CD. It was his very first experience with Linux... and a very positive one.

    I will reiterate one thing I have already read under this topic. No one should be without a Knoppix CD. Go find yourself a torrent or a mirror and get Knoppix now!!! You never know when it will save your a$$.

A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson

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