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Knoppix 3.3 Is Out
maedls.at writes "After 6 months of development, the latest version of Knoppix 3.3 is out - Kernel 2.4.22 with HIGHMEM (4GB) support, KDE 3.1.3, XFree86 4.3, OpenOffice 1.0.3 (German and English), KOffice 1.2.1, new boot options for RAM or hard-disk preload of the CD. Possibility to create a persistent homedir with personal data and desktop settings on a memory stick or similar, optional with AES encryption." The main Knoppix site is still down in protest of European software patent legislation (click on the link inside the English paragraph to get to the meat of the site), but the excellent knoppix.net has a detailed changelog.
Though other bootable CDs like morphix look promising, I'm impressed with the rate at which Knoppix moves forward. Knoppix has consistently displayed nice polish visually and in terms of usability.
As it's debian-based, I'm hoping some more of the hardware-detection, auto-setup, and visual polish can make it to stock Debian (yes, I know you can "upgrade" to full Debian after booting knoppix). The boot process is cleaned up and functional for new users to Linux, and the speed is remarkable for loading a compressed image off a CD (so long as you have 128+ megs of RAM).
Kudos to those who work and contribute to Knoppix for producing such a quality assembly of open source software in such a useful form.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
A bit unusual, but knoppix has included brltty support from their live CD. That, quite frankly, is cool as shit. Props to the coders, and the fanboys who keep 'em coding.
(brltty is a driver that allows text to be output to braille displays, typically used by the blind and the deaf-blind. Read my journal for a little bit more info.)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Actually, it saved my wife. The hard drive in her laptop died. Normally, there's a 3 year warranty on them, but Hewlett-Packard being the cheap fucktards that they are OEMed the drive and reduced the warranty to 1 year. So my 15 month old drive is useless. Oops, I digress.
Money is rather tight, so I wasn't able to get a replacement drive immediately. However, my wife needed internet access at the minimum. Knoppix to the rescue. She was able to get full blown internet access and email. With the addition of my Laks watch with its 128Meg of memory, she had a persistent home directory so her settings (e.g. bookmarks) weren't lost.
I definately feel Knoppix was worth the money I spent on it. Oh wait! It was free! Damn. Such a deal! Seriously. Keep a Knoppix CD handy at all times. Its a life saver.
-- Will program for bandwidth