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Knoppix for Rapid Desktop Deployment
heretic108 writes "From first boot to full desktop in 20 minutes! Knoppix has shot into the spotlight as a GNU/Linux distro suitable for demonstrating quality Open Source Software, standing out for its ability to self-configure itself into a vast range of hardware, and to run entirely off a CD boot without interfering with any existing system setup. That, plus its fat catalogue of pre-installed desktop software. But OSS enthusiast David McNab has poked a bit deeper, and found that Knoppix can install itself to disk, resulting in a completely configured GNU/Linux desktop system, ready to use, in 20 minutes, hassle free. CD no longer needed! Best of both worlds - use as a GNU/Linux demo disk, and if the user likes it, it's a snap to install permanently. I can't think of any distro that comes close to this, for ease and speed of setup. I found McNab's short Knoppix Installation Howto which gives a very brief and easy guide. With this rapid setup ability, Debian-based Knoppix makes a great contribution to the catalogue."
So, is this kind-of the same idea as the net-bsd bootable cd-rom that boots into KDE,which demonstrates teh power and flexibility of BSD-licensed software?
Other distros do. Mandrake, Red Hat, SeSU all have superb hardware detection. Knoppix is different only in that it detects hardware on startup, which is the only way to make a CD-only, no-install distro.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
... is the sheer number of packages included on a *single* CD ROM. It's incredible. (Plus, they tend to be quite recent versions, and with some programs, like the excellent and promising Scribus, that's important because progress is rapid.)
Also, if you want to show someone the sheer variety of free and Free browsers available with Linux, Scribus has konqueror, mozilla, dillo, not to mention text-based ones as well.
It's an amazing distro -- demoware that really works. Anecdote: I have used Knoppix, from the CD, as my only OS for several days when using a borrowed laptop on which I could not politely do an OS swap. Except a slight slowness with the CD up-and-down-spinning, it was hard to tell I wasn't just using a recent Debian system installed normally.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
There's another Debian-based bootable distro, called LNX-BBC. It is only 50 megs, but you can still install Debian from it and apt-get all the packages you want.
http://www.lnx-bbc.org/
Wrongo buckaroo!
Read the knoppix documentation... it does not, by default, install ANYTHING to ANY hard drive.. you have the option to put a swap file ont he hard drive but you have to select it =)
Look down the page http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html and you will see about what it does and does not do. NO installation or modifying of the hard drives are necessary -- with computers without necessary ram it will run SLOWER but it will still run.
Besides, its a worthless argument =) Their computers most definately have 128 mb ram...
There is KiX. You will find it in the contrib directory on the knoppix mirrors or somemore info in German (you might want to babelfish it ;-)
Live's to short - do another mile.
Yes, As long as you keep inside the size limit. I removed some of the Demos on the ISO and included a brainwave relaxing program AutoZen to run on my my Girlfriend's Windows machine. Worked fine.
WmWare workstation is only 11Meg so you should be OK.
Help fight continental drift.
There is BOCHS, but it emulates every x86 instruction, rather than being optimized for specifically running an OS. The developers (in the FAQ) do not recommended for the purpose you intend. I have not tried it.
Plex86 touts itself as *the* free (as in speech and beer) alternative. I have not tried this either.
Connectix makes Virtual PC, which is not free. I have not tried it.
Some other stuff it does well - it'll store swap, config and home directory on files in the first windows harddisk with enough space it can find. That means you can in fact use it as your primary OS if you're happy with not being able to add new software and slow bootup times. You can reconfigure, write docs and so on, and it'll all be saved to disk.
Yes, that's right. Remember that Knopppix was initially intended as a demo CD. The most important criteria was for it to not use a hard drive. But, Linux really likes to know that it has a swap partition even if it doesn't really need one. Knoppix fools Linux into thinking it has a swap partition by creating a small one in RAM. Knoppix also loopback mounts a crompressed file system tree which is accessed via symlinks in the / (root) tree but, the tree is a RAM disk. It is a beutiful piece of trickery to get Linux to run with NO HARD DRIVE AT ALL!
Knoppix doesn't mount the hard drive
Think again dildo. Have you ever used linux, or even knoppix for that matter? Just because there's no swap file, doesnt mean that it doesnt MOUNT the drives. It doesnt modify the hard drive but it DOES mount every volume it can. Precisely why it makes a good diagnostic tool and recovery agent. Try it some time, and see if you can read your hard drive.
-D
> Other distros do. Mandrake, Red Hat, SeSU all have superb hardware detection. Knoppix is different only in that it detects hardware on startup, which is the only way to make a CD-only, no-install distro.
FWIW, since around 7.0, Red Hat has re-detected hardware on startup, and will notice if anything has been added, removed, or changed.
I don't mess with SuSE much, but I vaguely remember that they have been doing it even longer. (Don't quote me on that part, though.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Nice troll!
Linux not ready for the desktop? Have you read the article? Have you tried the cd? It's amazing what a good distro can do.
Setting up printing as is as easy as clicking through a wizard, same with changing video settings, scanners, etc, etc, etc. How the arse do you justify spreading this kind of FUD? Do you get confused because the widgets look a little differently from your win98 desktop?
In the last several months, I've given away about 20 knoppix cds directly (indirectly, by running Linux training courses for which students use Knoppix, I've given away many more). It's all down to experience. Once users get used to a slightly improved (and hence, different) way of doing things, they're all over Linux.
Unfortunately, that's correct.
It will allow you to save some of your settings to floppy. For example, I can save my network settings. However, I have to run the network setup tool (under the Knoppix menu) to get them to work.
I think so, although you can ckeck Knoppix forum for a definitive answer. The people have been quite helpful there.
Excellent question... I will hope you still read this but its a bit after this was posted so shrug...
Students each have a disk that they have their source code on (they write the code to the disk). We compile onto the disk and the executable remains on the disk. Students turn in their disks (along with algorithms (ie their funny little flowcharts)) to be graded.
It was a good question... we STILL have to have a disk even though now we dont have to put the development apps on there... I say it was a very good trade. =)
You can do it even easier ... (one less step):
... that should work if you're running recent tools.
dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile.dat bs=1k count=x
mkswap swapfile.dat
swapon swapfile.dat
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)