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Knoppix 3.8 at CeBIT w/ Kernel 2.6, FF, and More
clsc writes "The German tech news site Heise Online reports that Knoppix 3.8 is being presented at CeBIT (Hall 9, Stand C39). Knoppix 3.8 has kernel 2.6 as default, KDE 3.3.2, OpenOffice 1.1.4, as well as... Firefox 1.0 and Thunderbird 1.0. There's also a really neato new thing involving unionfs . It seems to imply that you can change most anything on the running system, even as it is running from CD - and changes can be stored too (even on NTFS)."
LiveDVDs are here, at least from SUSE
Feather is a great distribution for doing this. It only needs 128 to 256 MB to have everything loaded and still plenty of processing ram. Great for somewhat older computers and has all the hardware recognition of Knoppix 3.6
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
Yes... just google for it... it comes up top with just a simple search... deity... kids these days want everything served up for them... too darn lazy, that's what it is... grrr... when I were a lad... we had to build our own clusters from scratch... none of these new fangled magic tools like ClusterKnoppix... aye... right tough we were...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
You could always offer to buy the computer outright if it doesn't go back to the way it was before you got there after you have a look at it with Knoppix (which it of course it will). The sales clerk may think they have an easy sale on their hands.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Plan 9 has a lot of good ideas in it, and I hope that many more of them make it into Linux.
However, unionfs did not originate with Plan 9--other UNIX systems have had it, too. I don't think it even came from Bell Labs.
It's a shame that novel OS's like Plan 9 are largely ignored, only for some of their features to be introduced later into mainstream OS's as "new" ideas.
Plan 9 was/is a research system; that's it's function in life. As long as the developers of other systems don't falsely claim that they invented it, and as long as they reference the inventors in publications, it's OK. Some large computer manufacturers are not quite honest about this sort of thing, though, and claim that they are constantly "innovating" when in reality, they are just copying.
The concept of LiveDVD has already been done: Suse LiveDVD This is probably not the first.
...but here's where to grab it once it is released:
http://torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/
My current laptop (HP/Compaq NX9030) doesn't run any kernel of the current Knoppix version well - driver modprobing crashes, one of them gets the laptop to just hang, the other one won't start X automatically and most stuff doesn't seem to work right. I haven't tried out the many boot options, but that also implies that it doesn't work that well.
However, the main OS on that laptop is Ubuntu Warty. I've never had a single problem concerning the hardware, everything works like a charm since the installation, the current Hoary LiveCD runs perfectly.
I agree to using Knoppix to test a laptop at the store, because if it works well it'll be a great Linux machine - but you might miss out on a few deals.
I guess the conclusion is: Try the LiveCD of the distro you want to install. If you want to install Ubuntu later, don't try Knoppix on the machine, it might make a difference.
Two Worlds - One Sun [Spirit]
Once it does work, it works like a charm, but it took me a couple of hours to figure it to work with my setup. I started with a pre3.0 Debian root_fs I grabbed from the net. Once I got the networking going, I changed sources.list and upgraded to Debian 'sarge' dist. Now I have a lovely GNOME 2.8 desktop all running under XP at (my guess) 80-90% of native speed. I've sucessfully gotten both VNC and NX to run under it though performance through NX is more sluggish than I expected.
You should see how easy it was to install this damn thing - you can either use "sudo knoppix-installer" for a hand held new install or do this to literally get the live cd working on the PC with a persistent home directory -
/dev/hda1 used to boot the kernel with lilo (30 Meg) /dev/hda2 for the knoppix image (I used 10000 Meg, but 800 Meg should be enough) /dev/hda3 (I used 1024 Meg) /dev/hda4 for the persistent home (rest of drive /dev/hda4 and format) /boot to /mnt/hda1. Also copy the file "/mnt/cdrom/boot/isolinux/minirt24.gz" from the cd to /mnt/hda1.
/boot/* /mnt/hda1". Or, you can use su. I just found sudo was fine.
/etc/lilo.conf to /mnt/hda1 and make the following boot entries (do not forget to uncomment the line with "prompt", or else the lilo boot menu will not appear): (vi /mnt/hda1/lilo.conf)
t 24.gzx
/mnt/hda1 partition temporary as /boot so lilo writes its map-file to the right place (sudo mount /dev/hda1 /boot) /mnt/hda1/lilo.conf)
* Partition the harddisk to make room for knoppix:
o ext2 partition
o ext2 partition
o swap partition
o ext2 partition
* Boot the knoppix cd with the cheatcode "tohd=/dev/hda2". This will copy the knoppix image to disk
* Reboot the knoppix cd with the cheatcode "fromhd=/dev/hda2" and check if it runs without the cd.
* Make the persistent homedir via the knoppix menu (penguin icon->configuration->make persistent dir, use entire
* Do not save your KNOPPIX configuration via the menu, all changes to the environment will be saved automatically because of the persistent home.
* Copy the files from
Note, you will need to mount hda1 and make it read/write. The copying can only be done with sudo, thence the command to copy is "sudo cp
* Copy
Note, learn vi commands first
image=/mnt/hda1/vmlinuz
initrd=/mnt/hda1/minir
append="fromhd=/dev/hda2 home=/dev/hda4 lang=us myconfig=/mnt/hda4"
root=/dev/hda2
label=Knoppi
read-write
* Mount the
* Let lilo write the boot loader to the master boot record (sudo lilo -C
* Remove the knoppix cd-rom and reboot.
That's it. you can use lilo.conf to set up another OS that exists, like Windows 98. I chose to dedicate the disk, seems easier. 10 minutes and I'm working with a fully functional Knoppix bootable hdd based PC.
Now THAT fuckign rocks hard.
I don't know if that was a joke or not, but if you need LaTeX ona a LiveDVD you can use Quantian. I just downloaded the 0.6.9.3 (or try an older version for a LiveCD) and it' quite impressive. It also has AucTeX for Emacs and a bunch of other math packages I don't really use.
Torrents here
Ubuntu Warty is fine, if a little sluggish because HZ is 1000; but that is fixable.
Last time I tried Hoary there were slight problems with not supporting a virtual Cirrus Logic graphics adapter; hope it gets fixed.
Just for your information, Mac OS X and other BSDs can mount anything over another directory without hiding its own content. For example, on Mac OS X you'd use the -o union mount option to merge two different filesystems.
Knoppix uses the rewritten NTFS driver which supports loopback read-write mounting a file on NTFS. Nothing new, the now also dead Phat Linux already did the same in 2002 with the same open source kernel driver. Currently the most popular "run Linux from NTFS" distribution is TopologiLinux.
It's very nice to see Knoppix caught up too.