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Specialized Knoppixes for Fun and Profit
An anonymous reader writes "The University of Puerto Rico High Performance Computing facility (HPCf) and the Puerto Rico Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN-PR) are pleased to announce the release of bioknoppix. bioknoppix is a live CD linux, based on KNOPPIX, and specialized to include tools for bioinformatics. bioknoppix does not need to be installed on your computer, making it a perfect tool for workshops and demos. Some of the software included in the 0.3 release: EMBOSS 2.8.0, jemboss, artemis, clustal, Cn3D, ImageJ, BioPython, Rasmol, Bioperl, Bioconductor. For more information please see the bioknoppix home page." Reader
Tussinator wrote in about a new release of ClusterKnoppix.
Wow, I'm a bioengineering major and I cant stress how useful this is, it like almost every computer in our lab has a different function due to software problems. After looking at the applications that are on the disc, I bet this well be big in schools. I wonder if they have considered doing this for other fields...
Actually, having Knoppix around might actually slow the spread of worms. Afterall, you can't change the executable files on an already-finished CD, and therefore any exploit somebody manages to get running will be gone as soon as the system reboots.
...is that it's happening at all today.
Bootable DOS diskettes (not Windows, AFAIK) worked only because there was such a limited range of hardware to support. Typically the games started with a menu ("Sound card?", "Video card?", "Joystick?"). Since Windows went 32-bit, the range and complexity of the hardware we use has exploded. It's almost unimaginable to find an operating system that will correctly autodetect and autoconfigure all the possible combinations of hardware out there.
And yet, this is what is happening. It is not 100% perfect but it's good enough to use for wide-scale distribution of software.
I predict a big future for this method of delivering software.
a new topic(and icon) exclusively for Knoppix ?
getSexySig();
What I would really like to see (and possibly create) would be a portable Knoppix distribution. Since Debian runs on more architecture than any other major distro, and Knoppix is Debian based, it should be fairly simple port Knoppix. How cool would to be to be able to run Linux on any mac, RISC workstation, or server with no installation?
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Even more, MAYBE you can boot on a Virtual Machine and not need to restart... The only limitation here would be bootup time.
Bite my shiny metal... oops... Nevermind!
Morphix is modular, and can be adapted with less effort
The base, the Knoppix part contains the kernel, kernel modules, hardware detection, etc. This base is left untouched. You can either a change a mainmod or add lots of minimodules.
The are four basic images to start off with. So making you own LiveCD is much easier.
It even possible to save you files, configuration and setting to the Morphix CD you using, ready for next boot up.
Did I mention the GUI installer ...
Brendan
The idea that these distros represent, however, could be very useful to gamers however. Games could come on a bootable CD at which point the game designer has complete control over the OS environment.
Pardon the beauraucratic buzzword, but this seem like the beginnings of a really cool trend. Imagine if everyone had their own customized knoppix and USB drive. We could stop at any terminal, and immediately have our favorite working environment and saved files.
Of course, this is merely a step towards the ultimate goal of not needing to carry anything or maybe just a small drive, and plugging that in and having instant access.
The point, though, is that this has the potential to make anybody without a laptop a lot more portable.
How about a knoppix without all the openoffice stuff, that is specifically designed to recover data from crashed PCs? There is a "super-recovery" live cdrom, but it's pretty old.
Or, how about a knoppix which searches a pc and a network for security vunerabilities? I think phlak linux is supposed to be sort of like that. But phlak linux doesn't work very well.
I would suggest that, by default, such versions boot to command line. If any gui, it should be lightweight, like fluxbox or something. I'm talking about something for pros.
I'd love to work with others on this. I have tons of ideas relating to it.
-cp-
Anyone ever consider this?
Yes. The primary downside being the comparitively slow read times from the CD. Not a big deal for occasional use, but it can get annoying as part of your regular working enviroment.
It works best with tasks where you typically open an app and work in it all day. Spend the money you save on the drive on memory to avoid as much swapping as possible.
It kicks butt for receptionsit and kiosk type use.
KFG
Man, I'd pay real money for this! Imagine if you could build a Linux CD to scan Windows HD's for Spyware and Viruses! There'd be no need to even boot the host OS and install anything to do it.
Of course, I don't know of any software in Linux that will scan for Windows crapware. {sigh}
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Also we mostly develop on Linux anyways (scientific stuff), but some of the people who do presentations aren't linux-savy or don't even have Linux on their laptops (can you imagine?!)
None of thinks of each demo disk as a specialized distro, it's just an all-in-one demo disk.