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.

Comments

just what the doctor ordered

[freeJustin]

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...

Re:Hey!

[LostCluster]

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.

Re:Going back in time?

[bmsleight]

This is just what Morphix allows you to do. It basically takes away the hard work of re-mastering a Knoppix CD.

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

Re:uhm

[LostCluster]

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.

how about knoppix recovery/security cdroms?

[walterbyrd]

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.

Linux for Travel

[core plexus]

I agree, and have been trying to do just that. ArcExplorer (free) comes in a Linux/Java version, but it is not easy to get going for the average user. I've put together some GIS data and related materials on a CD, mostly for sale to prospectors, rockhounds, and other mineral exploration, and there might be another problem: just the data alone takes from 150MB to >600MB.

I'd love to work with others on this. I have tons of ideas relating to it.

-cp-

Re:Specialization

[timeOday]

At work we're putting each of our demos on a bootable CD (using knoppix) to prevent bit rot. Some of our older demos haven't been ported to newer versions of our framework, config files get changed for other projects, etc.

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.