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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)."

17 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. Re:but the real question is... by qewl · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    Or alternatively Gnomorrea?


    ... FluxPox maybe?

    --

    (\_/)
    (O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
  4. Knoppix has come full circle by Gopal.V · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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 ..)

    --
    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
    1. Re:Knoppix has come full circle by rokzy · · Score: 4, Informative

      LiveDVDs are here, at least from SUSE

  5. 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.
  6. 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 qewl · · Score: 5, Informative

      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. (> <)
    2. 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.

  7. My luck... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  8. confederatefs by dotslashdot · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  9. Re:What about a beowulf cluster of these? by advocate_one · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  10. 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!
    1. Re:Writing to NTFS... by irgu · · Score: 4, Informative
      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.

  11. Re:Plan 9 has had this feature for a long time by idlake · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  12. 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.

  13. And if you want Knoppix to run from the hard drive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.