Knoppix v3.4 Hits The Mirrors

zxflash writes "SolidZ.com reports the latest update to KNOPPIX; the popular Linux based OS has just been released. Version 3.4 includes the version 2.6.5 Linux Kernel and improved hardware detection. It can be downloaded from one of the mirrors listed on the KNOPPIX homepage..." rduke15 adds "Koffice has been dropped for space reasons, as well as LaTex. From the forum: 'Download using bittorrent tracker at http://torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de:6969/. Remember: Leave your bittorrent client running after the download is finished!' And this is the complete list of included packages."

Comments

ehe

[Carlos Silva]

As usual I've finished downloading Knoppix 3.3 just last night..
Oh well..

What's New?

[AKAImBatman]

Anyone see a list of changes? I'm particularly interested to know if they've integrated the NTFS read/write libraries.

Dropping KOffice just makes sense. Why add all that extra space when 80% of the user base wants OpenOffice? Although it would be interesting to build a cross platform program (in Java perhaps?) that would allow you to custom-create these disks. Give me a version that will build a FreeBSD/KDE3/OpenOffice/Java CD to my specifications and I'll be in heaven. :-D

Re:What's New?

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

You're looking for morphix - modular knoppix.

Re:What's New?

[AKAImBatman]

Morphix is definitely interesting, but it's not for the faint of heart. Building a Morphix ISO is one part education, one part command line voodoo, and one part dumb luck. ;-)

An integrated program that would build the ISO from a bunch of selected packages would be very cool. Make it Java and you could run it on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, etc. I know there have been times that I've used my iBook to write a quick CD for a PC, or grab some software that I need for some other OS.

Re:What's New?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Morphix is definitely interesting, but it's not for the faint of heart.

hmm, that doesn't agree with what I've observered.

I don't have first hand experience building a morphix CD but when I needed a customized CD about 10 days ago, I pointed a friend to morphix.org and he had a CD ready for me a couple of hours later. It was his first time making a knoppix-like CD and he never mentioned any difficulty. (I pointed him to morphix.org because I wanted gnome.)

He later tweaked some of the customisations and burned 35 copies of that iso and no one came back to us with problems.

Re:What's New?

[dotwaffle]

I wonder if it is possible to create a Jigdo set... Jigdo is the Jigsaw Download program that Debian pushes. Essentially, it downloads individual files off the Debian website, then assembles them in an order suitable for burning onto CD, including the correct boot sector etc... Then it would be very easy to distribute multiple copies of KNOPPIX without having to seed them all. Just an idea...

Re:What's New?

[bmsleight]

Morphix is definitely interesting, but it's not for the faint of heart. Building a Morphix ISO is one part education, one part command line voodoo, and one part dumb luck. ;-)

For help building a your won Modular Live-CD, have a look at the Morphix How Tos, we have updated them.

To start off there is how to do simplest morph, then how to build a Mini-Module, then how to Add Modules to the Live CD. Then how to do bigger changes in by changing one of the Main-Modules.

The How Tos inlcude all the command line voodoo. It even possible to make a live-cd (image) by using the live-cd. There are different pre-made CD images with a whole range of (currently GUI-cantered) software. It also has an easy-to-use installer.

No Koffice?

[moxruby]

Despite a few limitations such as no word count (if it's hidden away there, please tell me!), I find Koffice the cleanest the most useable office suite available for linux.
Abiword comes a close second, but all versions I tried don't highlight selected text! This makes editing a frustrating guessing game.

Openoffice is too sluggish on my duron 1.3ghz, I'll give them a few more versions to clean it up before I try it again.

I hand out knoppix cds to many friends, can anyone shed light on why kOffice is no longer indluded?

Re:No Koffice?

[BladeMelbourne]

> OpenOffice is too sluggish on my Duron 1.3GHz

I find that very interesting. I run OO 1.1.1 (under Fedora Core 1 & Win98) on a PIII 450 MHz with 576 MB RAM. It runs very sweetly.

With the QuickStarter in the tray keeping part of OO in memory - starting times are quite acceptable.

check out MAME

[Kiro]

If you're gonna check out Knoppix then have a look at KnoppiXMAME too.

DVD Distro?

[Robotech_Master]

Will there ever be a DVD distro of Knoppix or some similar Linux that can be downloaded & burned? With all the extra space available on a DVD, there'd be room to put some really awesome apps on there...sort of a complete Linux machine in a can. And when you consider people are bittorrenting entire seasons of TV shows over on Suprnova and Animesuki, it doesn't seem like size would be that much of a problem...

Re:DVD Distro?

[MarkWPiper]

I believe there was a DVD distro of version 3.3, that was handed out only at a some various Linux conferences. There were bandwidth concerns, so it was never placed on the official mirrors.

IIRC, the DVD was given out at Linux-tag, in Germany a few months ago. If you google around, you might be able to find it.

Re:DVD Distro?

[Sancho]

This is a pretty hot topic on the forums and mailing lists devoted to Knoppix. For DVD is, obviously, space for more programs. Against, we have the fact that not everyone has DVD burners, DVD burners are still much more expensive than CD burners, DVDs cost quite a bit more, and downloading DVD images would suck up even more bandwidth. Some of these would be mitigated by maintaining two images (one DVD, one CD) but then there's the PITA of having two images to maintain!
What I'd like to see is Knoppix create sort of a framework DVD that you can use to remaster your own DVD. That's sort of the best of both worlds, I think.

Re:May bring me back to linux

[Neil Blender]

I have not used Linux in about 9 months. Why? Games.

I gave up Windows completely a year ago (except TurboTax on my wife's laptop.) Guess what? I smoke a hell of a lot less pot and spend at lot less time on the computer overall. Why? Same reason. Games.

Not just a new kernel

[NamShubCMX]

Not just a new kernel:

KDE 3.2.2
OpenOffice.Org 1.1.1
Gimp 2.0

Im burning right now... but I just wished they wouldn't have removed KOffice :(

Custom Knoppix

[smiley2billion]

And for those looking for a custom version of Knoppix with a few different tools built in check out this site:

http://www.knoppix-std.org/

From the site:
STD focuses on information security and network management tools. It is meant to be used by both the novice looking to learn more about information security and the security professional looking for another swiss army knife for their tool kit.

Bittorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Please try to atleast have a ratio of 1 before disconnecting your client.

Have some manners :P

Still got plenty of KDE goodies.

[Erris]

No Koffice had me a little worried, so I checked the list. Sure enough, they kept the most impressive KDE "productivity" goodies, kmail, kaddress, kpilot, korganizer, and their container, kontact. They, like Mepis, are using KDE 3.2.2, which is very nice indeed. Too bad they had to axe KOffice, which is lighter and faster than Open Office. I'm also partial to gnumeric over OO as well. Oh well, Knoppix still rocks.

Re:Still got plenty of KDE goodies.

[twener]

Well, KOffice is not gone completely - there is still koffice-i18n-de. ;-) What I don't understand is that according to the package list Kopete doesn't seem to be included?

Re:Mirrors for the torrent files

[prockcore]

crackmonkey mods...

hey, i mirrored them too! here they are:

Knoppix 3.4 Deutsch
Knoppix 3.4 English

Where's my +5 informative?

Yes, Knoppix does sound like an STD ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What an unfortunate choice of name. Then again I'm sure that a large number of the users will never have to worry about conventional STDs :P

Hit the mirrors?

[skogs]

Not the FTP mirrors...though now that we've slashdoted the damn thing they'll never get updated. Way to go poster dude. The torrents may be out, but the regular ftp/http sites are not synced up yet.

Guess I'll just have to wait. Tried every server across the globe and saw no version 3.4

Oh well.

Re:Hit the mirrors?

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

Not all of us have upstream providers that let BT run...and not all of us can change upstream providers either...

Re:Hit the mirrors?

[shadowmatter]

Is bittorrent suited for slashdot size downloading?

BitTorrent is ideal for Slashdot-size downloading. Typically hordes of users trying to download a file at the same time works against you -- with BitTorrent, it works for you, since everyone downloading the file can also distribute it prior to its completion.

If your download is slow, I'd first say be patient and see if it improves. If that doesn't work, make sure that ports 6881 - 6999 are open on your firewall/NAT (typically they aren't for DSL/cable users). If they aren't, your firewall/NAT is interfering with normal BitTorrent operation, because can only find new peers to download from by getting their IP addresses from the tracker. If they are open, however, you can find new peers by getting their IP addresses from the tracker and by them connecting to you (since they received your IP address from the tracker). After opening/forwarding these ports, its not uncommon for people to double their download speed.

- sm

TurboTax Online

[mr_zorg]

...except TurboTax on my wife's laptop.

Here's a tip: next year try TurboTax online. I can tell you it works fantastically, I've been using it for a few years now.

Re:Mirrors for the torrent files

[Anonymous Coward]

I translated them, then mirrored them.

scinobE 4.3 xipponK
ilihawS 4.3 xipponK

Bad news for Knoppix

[SteelX]

Knoppix v3.4 Hits The Mirrors

I guess that's seven years of bad luck for Knoppix... ;-)

Yes, NTFS write support included

[greppling]

"captive" is mentioned in the package list, so it seems they included it.

Changes in V3.4

[Necroman]

These are from the comments on the torrent page for KNOPPIX

* V3.4-2004-05-03 (experimental)
- switched from syslinux to isolinux (no emulation) boot method
- Kernel 2.4.26 (default) and Kernel 2.6.5 (as boot option) with ACPI enabled (use knoppix acpi=off in case of problems, knoppix26 to try Kernel 2.6)
- New wireless drivers for: ipw2100 ("Centrino"(TM)), madwifi, hostap
- captive-ntfs installer
- live-installer by Fabian Franz
- KDE 3.2.2
- kdevelop3
- OpenOffice 1.1.1 (german and english)
- gimp 2.0
- Had to remove the entire latex system (101MB) because of space reasons
- Removed KOffice for the same reason
- /dev/modem setup tool supporting serial, USB, bluetooth and irda devices
- gprs connection tool
- lots of improvements in the hardware detection and new boot options, please check knoppix-cheatcodes.txt.

Re:Changes in V3.4

[Squideye]

Removal of LaTex is not all that good. Lots of scientific and mathematic users need that for their formula-laden documents. And surprise there are a LOT of Linux users who are sci/mathies. I guess one could argue "then they should just install a distro themselves" but if the portability and applicability of a Linux distribution is a consideration, ie. they're going to use Knoppix on their laptop or a secondary computer, wouldn't it be terribly useful to have a TeX formatting app installed?

I mean... isn't UNIX originally conceived for scientific and mathematical applications, for which... ack.

Anyway, I'll just assume that OpenOffice.org has some kind of TeX-formatting facility which justified LaTeX's removal. Can anyone give us an indication as to whether this is the case?

Re:Changes in V3.4

[mst76]

You can always burn a TeXLive cdr. The demo version is a complete functional TeX distribution that runs from cdrom on win32, linux and macos.

\def\dealwithit#1{Is Plain Tex Included}

[manganese4]

\hbox to 2 in{\it I hope Plain Tex is at least included}

Re:Torrent stats

[Shakrai]

Hmm... I'm downloading it at about a third of the speed (15kB) that I'm uploading (45-50kB). My status is still 'blue' -- can't find a complete copy. Oh well I'm only pulling it on bittorrent to share it for others and chew some of Time Warner's bandwidth. Did it with Fedora and Slackware too -- download a complete copy share it until the next big thing comes along. Eats up the bandwidth of a monolithic corporation that I hate and gives something back to the community at the same time.

Everybody wins! Plus I get to see neat stats for my internet connection in nisca ;)

Re:acroread?

[mabhatter654]

He's already check out most of the stuff on the disk as redistributable. It's been out for over a year now. Several companies have made exceptions so he can put the stuff on the disk and have it be redistributable. Note, Knoppix isn't about being "pure" OSS. It's meant to work and show off how good Linux can be... not turn everything on the disk into OSS. Klaus has banged on a lot of doors to get cool stuff put on the disk. Hint: Tell your favorite packages [flash, Nvidia drivers, etc] to get on board!!!!

Re:Leave it running for what?!?

[erikharrison]

Courtesy.

Every P2P application since napster has started in the Windows system tray in order to increase the amount of stuff available at once. BT's design means that it can't work quite the same way - stuff is only shared while your downloading the thing, and rather than share a pool of files, you share individual files while your connected to a tracker.

It's not unusual (though thankfully not too usual) to be downloading via BT and all your seeders vanish or no current seeder has all parts of the file your after. Staying connected for an extra 5-10 minutes is a simple way to increase traffic, and is generally considered polite.

Re:PPC?

[njchick]

Now, about the PPC versions for us Mac crowd...?

Gentoo LiveCD
KNOPPIX PPC (unofficial)

Koffice vs. Openoffice

[ChiralSoftware]

I use OOo all the time, and find it to be very powerful, more powerful than MS Office in many ways. If it had better KDE integration it would be perfect... fortunately, KDE integration is on its way, and it will be fantastic, giving serious competition to anything else (including OSX) on the desktop. It makes sense to drop Koffice from Knoppix, and it will make even more sense once the KDE/OOo integration is ready.

----------
Create a WAP site

Re:My only complaint

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to throttle.

If you don't set a max upload limit, bittorrent will suck every bit of upload bandwidth available, and you will not be able to do anything else (including downloading that same bittorrent). Try setting your max to 35kbps, or something about 5kbps below what it's showing your max is now.

That will give your connection some breathing room to actually get a decent download speed.

mono distro

[jon_galloway]

It'd be nice if there was a Knoppix/Morphix variant with Mono. I know, I know, Mono is evil or something, but it could expand number of crossover developers who code .NET at work and want to get started with Linux in their spare time. If you're already reading and writing .DOC's, it seems like a logical step...

Ironic.....

[vwjeff]

Post about RAID modded as Redundant.

Slashdot and Bittorrent

[harborpirate]

When I first grabbed the torrent (English ver), there were a few seeds online and a couple hundred leechers. I got about 50 k/s to start out.

About an hour later, there were over 120 seeds and thousands of leechers. I was getting over 250 k/s.

How many other distribution methods can you say actually get FASTER when the bulk of the slashbots arrive on the scene? Bittorrent, my friends, is a beautiful thing.

Sure, when there aren't many folks on a torrent, its not that fast. And if there aren't any seeders you can't get the whole thing. But when a crowd this size comes into play, Bittorrent just makes sense.

I'm really surprised to see as many complaints as I saw in this thread. Especially given that bt is free, and that the speed has ramped up to rediculous proportions.

I managed to download a 696.2 MB file, which was posted on the front page of Slashdot, in 1h 25m. To me, thats absolutely stunning.

Go Bittorrent! And, if I may say so, thank you slashbots! When else can you say "thank you" for people slashdotting something? (Well, unless its a spammers IP...)

Re:Slashdot and Bittorrent

[kyhwana]

Try throttling your upstream on your BT client (Or get a better one if it doesn't let you) to 1/2 or 2/3 your total upstream bandwidth.. If you use all your upstream, you're downstream speed will suck ass..
I'm on comcast cable, which (in real life) has 24-25K upstream, so I set my upstream throttle in Azeurus to 16K, and i'm now maxing out my downstream with just the knoppix DL.. (400K/s)

No LaTeX?

[Quattro Vezina]

Hmm...I actually use LaTeX far more than I use a regular word processor. That's not good.

I understand why the Knoppix guys did it tho...space on live CDs is a pretty big problem, and I suppose they had no choice if they wanted to upgrade KDE, OpenOffice.org, GIMP, etc.

It irks me, but I can live with it. And it's not like Knoppix is my main distro anyway--I mostly just play around with it and use it as an advocacy tool.

Shameless Plug

[CedgeS]

Sigh. I guess it's about time for me to update the Knoppix data rescue guide on how to use knoppix to rescue data off dying windows machines.

leaving stuff out

[sewagemaster]

here's what i dont really understand...
since this is a live CD, why would they take out koffice and latex while leaving development libraries in? sure developers need these things, but they would be compiling their large projects running their OS entirely off a liveCD. this is true too for hdd install - it includes a lot of junk that makes everything slow. i love knoppix and it's excellent hardware, but maybe this is one of the improvements it can make?

also, it would be great if the hdd installation tool would allow installing over seperate partitions, except everything under one....

Re:leaving stuff out

[Lothsahn]

Well, I'm glad they left the development libraries in. Here's why:

I tutor inner city kids, of all ages. Some just use knoppix for kids, which removes the development stuff for games and such, while other older kids are actually interested in learning how to use a computer.

For one of them, I'm actively using G++ to teach him about how to program in C++. Without knoppix, that would have been much more difficult, and I probably would have ended up downloading the free (as in beer) MS compiler.

Since it's included on knoppix, I can teach him both linux and C++ at the same time.

That's why it's in there :)

Leaving things out (KOffice etc)

[Frodo420024]

No KOffice

For LiveCD's, I would love to have KOffice. It's good-looking, functional and fast. I understand the political reasons (MSOffice user migration), but would love to see a version with KOffice, LaTeX and possibly other stuff.

Ideally, someone would set up a server where one can pick and drop whatever modules needed and drop the rest (I don't use GIMP, for one), within the space limitations of your standard ISO. Download ISO, burn, and you have your very own Linux boot CD with the best of both worlds:

LiveCD

• Misconfiguration impossible
• Hard drive & HD install not needed
• No virus
• Runs on any machine at hand

Installed

• You get to choose the SW packages

Heck, I'd even pay to have such a CD beside my SuSE install.

Re:May bring me back to linux

[PReDiToR]

I smoke a hell of a lot less pot and spend at lot less time on the computer overall

I'm sorry to hear that, would you like me to send you a Windows CD so you can carry on as before?

running it now

[sewagemaster]

i'm running this right now off the CD. boot times might be a tad slower than v3.3, but all the apps run really fast. perhaps it's the newer version of kde it's using... but i'm guessing it's because of kernel 2.6.5 that it's using. (i've tried installing kernel 2.6.x before and i just got a bit tired of recompiling and recompiling. in the end i always end up with some bloated kernel that makes my system slower than before with kernel 2.4)...

one glitch when detecting SCSIs on my comp. got a seg fault during the detection... setting noscsi in lilo resolved this problem.

one thing i noticed is missing is the hard drive hdd install script/program that used to be there in all the older versions.

the c't preview version didnt have it either and google shows this link for a script for that version http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8171

anyone had any luck installing the new 3.4 on their comps?

Throttle your upstream , and use Wondershaper

[Hungry Admin]

kyhwana is right - you need to throttle your BT upload speed so that there's room for the acknowledgement packets you are sending to people you are downloading from. On my ADSL connection I have 1.5Mbps down and 256kbps up, so my uplink is theoretically able to handle 256/8 = 32 kbytes/sec, ignoring protocol overhead. I am using the wondershaper script on my firewall, so that gets eroded to 220kbps or about 27 kbytes/sec max throughput.

On a fast torrent I hit my max download speed (120 to 140 kbytes/sec) which uses about 6-8 kbytes/sec of my upload bandwidth for ACKs. So I can run up to 19 kbytes/sec uploading before I see congestion and slowdowns. I usually throttle it back to 15 kbytes/sec to maximize my downloading while allowing me to do other things online while BT is active. BT is set to allow a 10:1 ratio for your download speeds from other leechers. So, if you are uploading at 15 kbytes/sec, you should be able to download at 150 kbytes/sec. If you are downloading from a seed, then the ratio doesn't matter :-).

If I am only seeding, I can just let BT use the maximum uplink speed of my connection, since there isn't anything else downloading. The wondershaper script on my firewall is set up to give low priority to BT packets. Activity on my other machines will get placed at the front of the queue, if there is a queue. The price I pay for low latency for ssh, web browsing, email, and gmaing is the loss of about 15% of my max bandwidth. It's a worthwhile tradeoff.

\LaTeX Removal

[d-Orb]

While I tend to use LaTeX for everything, I understand that after all, Knoppix is a distro that enables loads of new users to try Linux for the first time and so on. They are not going to use LaTeX. Otoh, LaTeX (and a flurry of other scientific applications) would benefit from their own liveCD. And you know what? It exists!!!! It's called Quantian, and hopefully, a new version (based on Knoppix 3.4) will be out soon. Loads of math/engineering programs, TeX, LyX, Texmacs, scipy... Unfortunately, this project is not as visible as Knoppix (it's a derivative, after all).

Better Torrent than Slashdot's

[FreeUser]

Slashdotters appear to be a bunch of leaches unwilling to leave their sessions open for others to download with.

Fortunately, for those of us who weren't reading slashdot last night, suprnova.org has a far better torrent available (which still works the morning after):

http://66.90.75.92/suprnova//torrents/1681/KNOPPIX _V3.4-2004-05-04-EN.iso.torrent

After getting 0kB/s via the torrent provided to slashdot, I was gratified to be getting 79kB/s via the suprnova.org torrent.