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)."

Comments

cool

[xbmodder]

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

Knoppix is really good

[Dancin_Santa]

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.

Re:Knoppix is really good

[carrett]

yeah. it's also great for people who are new to linux and unsure if they actually want to install it on their machine. i tell all my n00b friends that if knoppix works fine on their box, then, theoretically when they install a distro on their harddisk it should work as well (especially if it is debian-based).

Re:Knoppix is really good

[zarkzervo]

I like to take it with me to the computer store to try out on the various laptops I am considering buying.

"Sir!. I want you to leave the store. Or else I'll have to call the police. Your |\/|4D h4x0R 5k1Lz have no place here."

But seriously. I believe you have to be prepared to use about 30 minutes to explain to the clerk what you are trying to do. Too many have not heard about Linux (and even fewer have heard about Knoppix) and think you are damaging the setup of the computers.

Re:Knoppix is really good

[Mad Merlin]

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.

Re:Knoppix is really good

[Tomcat666]

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.

Re:write to its own disk?

[ErichTheWebGuy]

Or maybe with multi-session CDs, assuming that there is enough room on the CD? Programs could be loaded with the changes you have made, say, to config files... Doesn't seem impossible, and probably more reliable than a CD-RW...

Re:but the real question is...

[qewl]

... if they wrote a virus for KDE, would they call it "The Klap?"

Or alternatively Gnomorrea?


... FluxPox maybe?

Knoppix has come full circle

[Gopal.V]

Back when knoppix came out - it was a curiousity. Mainly because most systems needed hours of configurations to get it working "the way I want it". Small things like hooking up a "fetchmail" before "postfix flush" or putting both into the if-up scripts. Morphix was the first step towards that (eg if you want to browse securely from a cyber-cafe - without any keyloggers peeking).

Now with lots of machines with 512 Mb and greater RAM, a LiveCD doesn't sound that bad. This unionfs thing clinches it - but the catch is still that if you change your machine, all this is lost. All that said, LiveCDs are here to stay (I think LiveDVDs might be just around the corner ..)

Re:Knoppix has come full circle

[rokzy]

LiveDVDs are here, at least from SUSE

Re:Knoppix has come full circle

[Mad Merlin]

There have been several Knoppix DVDs already, special versions of 3.5 and 3.6 at least, although they were only given away at various tech shows in the past. Now that they're using BitTorrent to distribute as well as regular mirrors, I don't see any reason they don't have wider distribution of the DVD version. Perhaps ~2 gigs of software is enough and they don't want to fragment development between the CD and DVD version, I wouldn't say that DVD burners are commonplace just yet.

Re:Knoppix has come full circle

[quake74]

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.

coLinux and live CDs

[QuantumG]

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.

Re:coLinux and live CDs

[DrXym]

While it would be cool to see Colinux working, I seriously doubt it will allow networking. Getting colinux to network is a massive pain involving installing Win32-Tap, reboots, messing around with bridges / NAT, fiddling Linux-side to make it work and generally ripping your hair out. This is definitely one area that requires improvement - both for Colinux and Microsoft who should ship some kind of TAP device by default.

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.

Re:coLinux and live CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we can do Knoppix for Windows from CD ... there's a QEMU on the CD which autoruns, and the CD will boot 'real' as well so there's no waste when you have finished learning and want to take the trainer wheels off. Not highly performant under QEMU, but good enough. Treats Windows like a NAT-router-firewall (!), so networking is preconfigured.

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.

Knoppix can REALLY impress

[xiando]

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??

Re:Knoppix can REALLY impress

[qewl]

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

Re:Knoppix can REALLY impress

[ahfoo]

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.

My luck...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have finished downloading Knoppix 3.6 with my modem yesterday...

confederatefs

[dotslashdot]

Is there a confederatefs located at the bottom of this stack that uses ioslaves to pick fields from a database?

Re:What about a beowulf cluster of these?

[advocate_one]

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...

Writing to NTFS...

[Mad Merlin]

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?

Re:Writing to NTFS...

[irgu]

Captive NTFS is defunct for a year now: Development Status: Project is no longer developed. It's very pitty it couldn't achieve reliability.

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.

Re:Plan 9 has had this feature for a long time

[idlake]

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.

Now we need simple online storage - GMail FS anybo

[OlivierB]

The one last thing that could even more favorise live CD adoptions could be online settings and file storage.
Sure you can carry around a USB key and store your settings there. But imagine being able to boot a machine anywhere and beinga ble to retrieve your field from something ala Yahoo briefcase.

Solutions exist out there; think GMailFS
If they would include this on the KNOPPIX CD with automount and all..
I am drooling just thinking about the possibilities!

Live DVD

[HogynCymraeg]

The concept of LiveDVD has already been done: Suse LiveDVD This is probably not the first.

No, go kio_fuse instead!

[headLITE]

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.

Not On BitTorrent yet...

[dohboy]

...but here's where to grab it once it is released:

http://torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/

And if you want Knoppix to run from the hard drive

[Anonymous Coward]

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 -

* Partition the harddisk to make room for knoppix:
o ext2 partition /dev/hda1 used to boot the kernel with lilo (30 Meg)
o ext2 partition /dev/hda2 for the knoppix image (I used 10000 Meg, but 800 Meg should be enough)
o swap partition /dev/hda3 (I used 1024 Meg)
o ext2 partition /dev/hda4 for the persistent home (rest of drive
* 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 /dev/hda4 and format)
* 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 /boot to /mnt/hda1. Also copy the file "/mnt/cdrom/boot/isolinux/minirt24.gz" from the cd to /mnt/hda1.

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 /boot/* /mnt/hda1". Or, you can use su. I just found sudo was fine.

* Copy /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)

Note, learn vi commands first

image=/mnt/hda1/vmlinuz
initrd=/mnt/hda1/minirt 24.gz
append="fromhd=/dev/hda2 home=/dev/hda4 lang=us myconfig=/mnt/hda4"
root=/dev/hda2
label=Knoppix
read-write

* Mount the /mnt/hda1 partition temporary as /boot so lilo writes its map-file to the right place (sudo mount /dev/hda1 /boot)
* Let lilo write the boot loader to the master boot record (sudo lilo -C /mnt/hda1/lilo.conf)
* 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.

unionfs workalike on BSD / Mac OS X

[headLITE]

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.

Re:write to its own disk?

[FlashBuster3000]

lol, oh no, you're all on the wrong way.
In the german article it says:
Through unionfs it is possible to change every file on the knoppix-system. But this doesnt mean the cd,
unionfs just takes care of this, and if you, let's say, change ~/.xinitrx, it copies this file to the harddisk, which can be on NTFS (but this is called unstable..).
And through that you theoretically can change the whole knoppix, install software, whatever you like, because your changes are on the harddrive.

Hope, this helped you.

Remastering your own custom KNOPPIX

[rwa2]

Remastering your own KNOPPIX is easy and it works.

I built a custom system maintenance image for work in a couple of hours. Among the changes:

• Stripped out games, i18n (takes up a lot of space)
• installed some extra utilities (gkrellm, iftop, etc.)
• captive-ntfs ntoskrnl and ntfs.sys files already stored in /var/lib/captive
• installed DOSemu to run Ghost and DriveImage (previous backup standards). This allows me to do backups and restores over the network, or from a USB2.0 / firewire drive (that isn't always detected properly under real DOS). I can even backup and restore to SATA or SCSI/RAID arrays that aren't supported under DOS.
  Unfortunately, DOSemu stripped out wholedisk access, so I have to restore the MBR with dd . :( Anyone know how to hack wholedisk access back into the dosemu source?
• Custom scripts to automate connecting to our fileservers and detecting/backing up drives with partimage, dd, etc.
• And of course, custom backgrounds :P

Pretty damn useful... it's the only system maintenance CD that boots on all of our hardware.

If only grub could be bootstrapped from CD, we would also use it to boot into existing systems and it'd be perfect!