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Klaus Knopper, Creator of Knoppix Talks to DistroWatch
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. "
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.
2) There's a friendly boot disk that has all the tools to reset admin passwords on a single floppy: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.h tml - it works well, I've used it on a box at work we could not otherwise access.
2) Not that Knoppix has this, but why would this be a dangerous addition? You can reset the admin password by editing a single file - the boot disk above just makes it a snap. If we start eliminating utilities in the name of preventing "hackers" from abusing them, then we might as well disable shell, network, and disk access as well.
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
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 over at their site.
;oP
.sig there!
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
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
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
The Knoppix-as-Debian-install-cd howto: here
Mark Cappel
Editor
LinuxWorld
*sigh* I'll Bite, troll.. You can boot any distro up and write over the registry of a windows install existing on a FAT system, however NTFS only support read functionality and write is disabled in most kernels by default being that it WILL eat your data.
On the other hand NTFS permissions don't mean jack in a posix system. So you could boot up to a live boot, mount the win partition and read any data you werne't supposed to.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
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.
m l
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.ht
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! 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); the problem is that its stability seems to depend on which modules were compiled into the kernel, 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).
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 to play the movies, so all formats supported by mplayer (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
Sigura Non Grata
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.
Why not fork?