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Klaus Knopper, Creator of Knoppix Talks to DistroWatch

Posted by Hemos on 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. "

7 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Wonderful Dist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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. Re:Does Knoppix have an NT reg editor? by exhilaration · · Score: 3, Informative
    1) You smell like a troll, but I'll bite

    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.

  3. License by kaosrain · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  4. Knoppix installs full Debian system on Harddrive! by abcho · · Score: 5, Informative
    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

    The Knoppix-as-Debian-install-cd howto: here

  5. Brief review of Knoppix by markcappel · · Score: 4, Informative
    Yes, yes, I'm the editor of LinuxWorld and hence I have an obvious motive for saying this, but here is a link to a recent, fabulous, well-written review of Knoppix, and it's place in the Debian world.

    Mark Cappel
    Editor
    LinuxWorld

  6. A customizable survival kit! by WanderingGhost · · Score: 3, Informative

    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).

  7. You should try out MOVIX by linuxghoul · · Score: 3, Informative
    If all you want to use this for is playing all sorts of movies, Movix 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 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

    --
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