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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. Distribution... by whiteranger99x · · Score: 5, Interesting
    If I may ask, what made you decide to base this distribution on Debian as opposed to something like Slackware, RedHat, or even a Build Your Own Linux Distribution?

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

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  2. Autodetection by CableModemSniper · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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  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. Hardware detection by exhilaration · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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!!

  5. Re:Knoppix for installfests... by Ed+Avis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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  6. 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

  7. not really linux by mgkimsal2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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).

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