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Knoppix 3.8 at CeBIT w/ Kernel 2.6, FF, and More

Posted by timothy on from the slicing-edge dept.

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)."

7 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. cool by xbmodder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Nothing to see here... Only the best linux boot CD ever Knoppix has saved me thousands. They should win the Nobel Prize or something.

  2. Knoppix is really good by Dancin_Santa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I like to take it with me to the computer store to try out on the various laptops I am considering buying. If Knoppix doesn't have any trouble with the device drivers, I feel comfortable buying the laptop. If it runs into some issues, I can scratch that laptop off my list. And since it doesn't have any longterm effect on the existing OS, it can be loaded on with impunity.

    That's how I decided which fileservers to buy to run my distribution center.

  3. coLinux and live CDs by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I was talking to Jeff Waugh from Ubuntu the other week (*cough* blatant name dropping *cough*) who suggested that the next Ubuntu Live CD might have coLinux on it. You'll be able to plug the CD into any Windows XP machine and get Ubuntu running in a window (that you can fullscreen if you like). He said he'd prefer not to use the Cygwin X server, so I think he's going to put up a bounty for a frame buffer -> DirectX driver for coLinux.

    No need to reboot to demo linux, that could well be sweet.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  4. Knoppix can REALLY impress by xiando · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There is one way of really supremely impressing people using Knoppix some people are not aware of: IF you have a gigabyte of RAM or more then you can actually load the whole Knoppix CD into memory so you can use the CD drive for all other kinds of things... But this has one obvious bi-effect that I have realized impresses so heavily: When programs are started from RAM, they obviously load faster than from a hard drive. Knoppix loaded into memory is the fastest Linux distribution I have seen so far, almost all programs start instantly. So if you have a machine with lots of ram and want to seriously impress: This is the way to do it! This is kind of cheating as no normal Linux system can perform like this, but it is ideal for demonstrating Linux. On a personal note, I would seriously be happy if something like this could be done with a normal distribution: Say if you have 3 GB RAM, then why not load everything into a portion of it at boot and run programs off memory .. even if you have Linux installed on your hard drive? Obviously this is 'waste of RAM', but hey, if you have lots of money and therefore RAM, why not??

    --
    9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
    1. Re:Knoppix can REALLY impress by ahfoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, Gigs of RAM isn't really all that cheap, so I think using Damn Small Linux to do the same thing is more impressive for most people because you can use what is available in the here and now. You can easily load DSL into RAM with 256Megs and sometimes it works with 128Megs, but you won't be able to add many other packages once you get it online.
      However, and I'm currently typing on just such a system, it's not as fast as you'd hope. The reason is that LiveCDs use compression on the filesystems so you have that overhead preventing things from being as fast as it could be. But certainly as big RAM goes mainstream there is no doubt in my mind that the idea of running the whole system from RAM is inevitable. Like I say, I'm already there albeit using a compressed filesystem.
      As for this unionfs thing. Is that completely unrelated to klik? That's a pretty cool development on Knoppix that has come a long way in a very short time. You can already install most Debian packages on Knopppix without a hard drive install using Klik. And even better, you can save the packages to hard drive or removeable media. So, you don't lose them at all when you change to another machine.
      This totally rocks. I'm not sure if it's related to the unionfs thing, but it certainly deserves mention because it is hot shit.

  5. Writing to NTFS... by Mad+Merlin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As the summary hints at writing to NTFS, will this version of Knoppix use Captive NTFS in some manner, or is it just going to write to a loopback file to get around the problems with using the native Linux driver for writing to NTFS?

    --
    Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
  6. No, go kio_fuse instead! by headLITE · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually, they should include kio_fuse. It's a fuse module enabling the kernel to mount any KDE kio_slave. This combined with the fish:// or webdavs:// kio_slaves...

    You can get 1 GB of webdav accessible space at GMX.net for free if you know enough German to get around the freemail signup.