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GNOPPIX: Bootable GNOME CD
ubiquitin writes "While KNOPPIX has been around for some time, the GNOPPIX project has only recently made its first release. The main difference is that it lets you boot into the GNOME desktop environment. Usually forks are more trouble than they're worth, but given the limits of what you can compress onto a single CD, separate projects makes sense to me. Hopefully more widespread recognition will also bring about a few more mirrors."
Live CDs are one of Linux's "killer apps". Considering the low numbers of Live CDs out there. This is one niche that's not being fully explored. How about an Astrix Knoppix? Or a Musicians Knoppix? Same with graphics. Knoppix for schools. Knoppix for someone into the engineering arts.
I've handed out a number of copies of the CD, too, to friends & colleagues who aren't brave enough to go through the whole repartition shindig to put a dual boot installation on their Windows box but who are curious about Linux. Knoppix has raised more than a few eyebrows around here. While I'm not exactly a "Linux evangelist," I do enjoy watching people expand their horizons. KNOPPIX (and now GNOPPIX) can be useful tools for winning "converts," if that's important to you.
GNOPPIX means that now I can hand 'em two CDs & say, "This one brings up the KDE desktop & this one brings up GNOME, so you can see what all the brouhaha is about."
That is, I'll be able to do that after the GNOPPIX site recovers from being /.ed or puts up a few gazillion more mirrors ;-) It may be faster just to wait for the KNOPPIX folks to finish their DVD image...
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
It would be really cool to take KNOPPIX to the next level: DVD-RW knoppix, where you can actually save your changes on the disk. (albeit slowness) Theoretically, you could write a certain amount of information to it, until you have filled up the disc, then have a mechanism to write a new clean DVD-RW with just the most modern information. That with a very driver heavy Linux kernel should allow for your "desktop" being exactly the same on any machine you insert the disc into!
Linux in a Nutshell, Fourth Edition
actually knoppix used to carry a half-hearted gnome desktop effort back in the day, until klaus understandably dropped it to make room for extra kDE eye candy. there are already plenty of essential gtk apps on the Knoppix cd today, just no desktop. the cool thing about kde 3.1 is it enforces KDE themes and colors onto gtk programs so you can hardly tell the difference apart from things like transparent snap-on menus, font rendering hints, and other (imo) unneccceesssary eye-candy. Eclipse running on knoppix manages to look like kde native which is no mean feat - tips hat to trolltech (and their evil canopy group overloards)
knoppix still includes the excellent fluxbox, which of all the current destop managers shows the most promise.
Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
I hope this project got around the patent issues that are plaguing KNOPPIX. Good bootcds are wonderful and put bootfloppies to shame. KNOPPIX is currently closed - view their current page and not the old one that was /.ed.
And, Knoppix has already sold several people on Linux (want to try this Linux thing you've been hearing about? Check this out, runs off the CDROM, nothing gets changed, and it all just works). Just the fact that fully functional OS boots from their CDROM the first time has a kewlness factor...
The problem is (I know it's a matter of personal preference, live and let live and all that) is that it's KDE and a not a very attractive version: I've personally been waiting for a Gnome-based Knoppix-like CD (again, personal taste, I like the color green, watermelon and Gnome over KDE -- for me it's a matter of aesthetics).
I think an attractive version of Knoppix will make it easier to "sell" linux to curious coworkers. Unfortunately, Gnome 2.4 won't be ready until later (they're using 2.2 -- still nice, but 2.4 is, IMHO, a gorgeous desktop)
The website did say that nice appearance was one of their goals (didn't see screenshots -- and the page was crawling already), they apparently also made other changes (with hardware detection, apparently), but personally, I've just been waiting for a purty Knoppix-like live CD to give to friends.
Hurrah!
Actually one of the reasons I've played with Knoppix is because you can try out different window mangers very easily...
:-)
While booting up up you get the choose of going for help, and if you do that you will see the choose of different window managers to try.
Not sure about the need for another live distro (but I'll qualify that with a what ever scratches an iche) then again, anything that has the same quality as knoppix is sure to impress any on looking windows users
ISO9660 has nothing to do with being bootable, a bootable CDROM has what's analgous to a bootsector, a chunk outside of the filesystem that holds an image of the "boot floppy" that the bios emulates. (theres virtual hard drive mode).
It's basically a kludge - another session that contains the boot stuff.
DVDs just dont have this. DVDs arent multisession either. So they need an entirely different kludge.
You could carry a DVD and a floppy, or bootable CD around.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Hope this becomes a new trend; especially with DVDs. Then we can get rid of OS from hard drive entirely and just use a universally recognized file system on the HDD. You can boot whatever OS you want with the DVD and get the work done. Imagine four different people in your home using the same machine with four different OSs. The ultimate Virtual Machine!
However, you still have X and KDE taking up space on the disc, where there may be other things you'd rather have on a true text-only disc. I, for one, would love to see a "Toppix."
A little googling revealed this site that tells how to Boot KNOPPIX from an USB Memory Stick.
"DVDs just dont have this. DVDs arent multisession either. So they need an entirely different kludge.
"
And yet Solaris 8 and 9, and MacOSX 10.2 can do it.
So what's Linux's excuse again?
Bzzt wrong answer.
You can make a bootable DVD-ROM, I've done it, and booted a number of systems with DVD-Rs. We migrated a number of our system imaging CDs (which with Win2k were spanned) onto DVD-Rs, and its almost like the good ol' Win95 days again; multiple system images on a single bootable DVD-R.
We can realistically only fit about 3 of the newest images (which are pigged out with every application the desktop support crew can think of adding), but it kind of rox0rs, as kids are fond of saying these days.
Still, it's a pain to not have any of that stuff. And, since it's running from CD, it's not so easy to just install more packages.
Why don't you get, like, a *real* project to work for instead of blabbing off about how you're "contributing" to the open sores kommunisty? They don't like you, you know.
How about "switch to linux"?
"ooh, I don't know... I don't have any HD space left..."
"Well, how about you give this (K|G)noppix CD a spin and see if you like it?"
And if you really like it... you can install it on you hard disk! I still don't know how to get a configured and up-to-date debian system running faster (that is, short of running a debian apt mirror yourself :D)
It's also great for installing Linux yourself, because it's got some of the best hardware detection capabilities around.
I use Knoppix for just that reason.
When people with a bad windows install bring their computer in to be fixed, they always ask if we can save their address book, emails, documents, because they are so very important. You know, the kind of thing you should back up regularlly.
Anyways, we just boot the machine with knoppix, transfer the data off the bad partition on to an external hard drive and call it good. Before we used to have to pull the drive out and get it mounted in another system for this.
yeah my next door neighbour had her hard disk crash on her, and while waiting for her replacement disk she survived on my KNOPPIX cd for a week using mainly gaim and mozilla. the only thing she really needed that I couldn't get working was flash (the plugin needs to write to the mozilla directory which was on the cdrom)
I've used Knoppix to introduce many newbies to Linux.
:)
:)
:)
The most innovative way I've used Knoppix to bring more people to Linux was introducing the idea of using it as the demonstation OS for computers that are to be auctioned.
The place from where I usually buy my machines had a problem. Following a visitation by a flying goon squad from Australian's version of the BSA, this auction house suddenly discovered that they could not install a certain well known OS on computers to be auctioned. Previously, they did a minimal install to enable people to see that the machines were in good working order etc. Now, it was not possible to show that computer systems were in good working order.
I solved my problem of ensuring that machines were working prior to bidding by running Knoppix on them... In turn I introduced to the auction house the idea of using Knoppix to demo *all* their working systems. They took up the idea and solved their problem of demonstrating the machines working with a "legal" OS. It's a beautiful sight watching 50 Linux desktops running in the same room
The upshot of all this is that hundreds of "literate" and "semiliterate" computer buyers are getting their first ever hands-on exposure to Linux when they test machines prior to auction. The auctioneers tell me that they have been getting many enquiries about where to get Knoppix!! Incidently, the "killer app" on Knoppix appears to be the game "Frozen Bubble"
A more polished version of Gnoppix with the En lang items fixed will offer another choice for converting newbies over to Linux. More power to them