Knoppix Variant Offers Full NTFS Write Support

mache writes "Full NTFS write support for Knoppix is under discussion on Knoppix Ideas forum and it looks that Knopper will include Captive into Knoppix 3.4. The best part of Live CD with full NTFS write support is that it actually exists in LinuxDefender, a remastered Knoppix distribution made by Bitdefender, presented at LinuxConf 2003, the annual Romanian Linux Users Group (RLUG) conference."

Comments

Legality?

[duffbeer703]

If I'm skimming the Captive homepage to quickly, but it seems to me like Captive is using Microsoft DLL's to read/write NTFS filesystems.

Seems to me like that would or will violate the Microsoft EULA and leave Knoppix users open to problems if MS changes parts of these DLLs in subsequent service packs or releases.

Re:Legality?

[Nasarius]

It's not a DLL, but yeah, it's Microsoft's driver. The trick is that Knoppix isn't distributing this file, but rather searching your Windows partition for it.

Re:Legality?

[HolyCoitus]

It would seem unlikely that the EULA would have something in it saying that you are only allowed to use those drivers with the single operating system they came with.... Even if it did, I really doubt that would be completely enforceable? I mean, it isn't reasonable to assume that on the same computer, you can't use those drivers from an operating system that you own to access a hard drive that you own?

Nope

[Nasarius]

As always, NTFS read-only works fine, writing is very limited unless you want to corrupt your filesystem. Knoppix would be using an approach that uses Microsoft's ntfs.sys to handle writing. Of course, you need Windows installed (or at least a copy of ntfs.sys) for this to work.

Re:Nope

[Josh Booth]

Well... I just downloaded 2.6.1 and the help note in menuconfig says that nobody has had any problem with the NTFS writing, since it is limited to not changing the file size or creating new files. This is different from earlier kernels which pretended that they knew how to write NTFS and would actually mess up your partition. It says they have no reports of corruption, though :-)

Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive.

[xutopia]

obviously no. If someone has a valid XP licence they should be allowed to use it in any way they wish to and this includes the NTFS driver.

Re:what I still don't understand sbout Knoppix...

[Spoing]

Knoppix uses the Kudzu libs to do hardware detection; the same as Red Hat Linux and Fedora.

Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive.

[jonadab]

> It says they use ntfs.sys and even ntoskrnl.exe from your XP partition.
> Wondering if there are legal problems with this.

One supposes that if you have an NTFS partition with these files on it, the
files are licensed for you to use and therefore legal. (If not, you have a
problem that goes beyond captive-ntfs.) Unless there is some specific
verbiage in the EULA that expressly prohibits use of the drivers when the
NT kernel isn't running, or some such restriction, I'm not sure what the
legal problem would be. I find it difficult to imagine that the MS legal
team would have dreamed up that kind of restriction, since it's not the sort
of thing they would expect people to do. What happens when the EULA is
revised is another matter, but this would have to get on the MS radar for
that to happen, which will take at least a year, then another six months or
so until the next update/revision cycle, and hopefully by then the native
read/write NTFS support in the 2.6 kernel will be of such quality as to make
the whole point moot.

Linux "Switcher" CD's

[devinjones]

I see this as a crucial part of a "Switcher" CD that lets home users convert from Windows to Linux in small steps:

1. Boot from CD to try it out.
2. Convert to dual boot. There would be a utility to re-partition, install and configure for dual-boot. Let the user keep it dual-boot while they find substitutes for any Windows-only programs that Wine can't handle.
3. Convert to Linux only

You could give these out like AOL disks and slowly convert the installed base. There could be a utility to detect existing win32 programs and check their status in the Wine application list.

This would be the logical extension to Bruce Perens' UserLinux idea.

Re:Linux "Switcher" CD's

[/dev/trash]

Step 3 would never come for me, or a majority of users because of games and financial software.

pagefile

[hitchhacker]

Now that there is reliable NTFS write support, maybe we could get a kernel modification to use the pagefile.sys as a swap partition.

mkswap /mnt/ntfs/pagefile.sys
swapon /mnt/ntfs/pagefile.sys

What about using the windows temp directory for storage of highly used apps and libs?

-metric

Re:It is legal

[irgu]

Varies on country. Read the EULA. If it's valid in your country it's apparently a violation.

However the EULA also states that any use of the software not expressly granted to the end user is reserved by Microsoft. This way Microsoft can say OK for friends and NO for competitors. Did you already forget when Microsoft threatened MS Visual FoxPro users some months ago who used the same trick?

Ditch Microsoft then no such troubles.

Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive.

[irgu]

> Capabilities aren't part of quality?

They are. But NTFS is a huge project. It takes a lot of time. Today it's developed as a hobby, couple of hours a week or not even that much.

> I would really like to think that in a few months
> someone will figure out how to (safely) lift these restrictions

The developers said in the forums: somebody having lots of time must start active coding (no need for reverse engineering any more) or hire coders and finance the development.

Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive.

[__aatgod8309]

obviously no. If someone has a valid XP licence they should be allowed to use it in any way they wish to and this includes the NTFS driver.

The flaw in your argument: use of "obviously" and "should" instead of giving a reason why Microsoft would allow this. (Allow? Yes. Until their EULA is declared illegal or void, it's a legally binding agreement with MS software users - even when it's stupid.)