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Knoppix 4.0 DVD - Like a Kid in a Candy Store

IdleTime writes "O'Reilly Developer Weblogs has a nice review of the new yet unreleased Knoppix 4.0 on DVD. As the article says 'A totally new release of Knoppix was unveiled at LinuxTag 2005, Knoppix 4.0. This is the release that introduces the split between "maxi" DVD and "mini" CD releases. I've tried out the 4.0 DVD and let me tell you, I'm like a kid in a candy store.'" AlexanderT points to some currently available torrent files for the DVD.

20 of 353 comments (clear)

  1. Nice....... by compmanio36 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    See, this is awesome, because I can finally have everything I ever wanted in Linux with me, to run on any PC with a DVD drive (and who doesn't have one these days?), without having to install a thing. This means when I go to a friend's house, I don't have to use their spyware infested Windows partition, I can just pop in the Knoppix DVD and run that.

    I would like to know what else is included in the DVD version that isn't in the CD variant, though.

    1. Re:Nice....... by superpulpsicle · · Score: 2, Interesting

      After seeing fedora core 4 crash with the eclipse that it comes with natively, I am skeptical of all new distros and features.

      We are at the point where we release too fast squeezing everything into every version on every distro. I am starting to think 2 releases a year is a rush.

  2. RE: DVD Distros by Sabathius · · Score: 1, Interesting


    The best DVD distro I've tried so far is Suse 9.3 Professional. It's really well polished.

    The only problem seems to be video and audio codec support (no MP3s or DVDs by default)

  3. Does it have the Windows QEMU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The coolest Knoppix I've seen was last year's linuxtag (I think) that had a windows version of QEMU so if you autorun it on a Windoze machine it'll run Linux in a window.

    That sold one of my coworkers on it, and now he typically boots to linux instead of windows.

  4. Don't get me wrong... by Scott+Swezey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I love knoppix and all, but when was the last time you popped it into someone else's computer (especialy one at work or school if your not IT/fixing it) and didn't get your head bitten off.

    Hell, I still like booting school computers into knoppix when no one is looking, then taking the CD out and walking off. They FREAK out... lol

    --
    Scott Swezey
    1. Re:Don't get me wrong... by joe_bruin · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I love knoppix and all, but when was the last time you popped it into someone else's computer (especialy one at work or school if your not IT/fixing it) and didn't get your head bitten off.

      Well, when I was travelling around the country, visiting my friends and family, for one. I wanted to ssh into my machine to read my mail, browse the web using firefox, and play my mp3s. To accomplish this on their spyware-ridden Windows machines, I brought with my a Knoppix CD, and a DVD of my mp3 files. No installing software on their machines (they surely don't have ssh installed), no worries about having my password stolen by whoever rooted that computer, no annoying pop-ups. Using Knoppix was the least intrusive method of doing this, as their PC is 100% back to its original state when I'm done with it.

    2. Re:Don't get me wrong... by Xabraxas · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I haven't used Knoppix in a long time but the Gentoo LiveCD allows you to do this if you pass the right option at boot time. It caches the entire CD in memory so you can take it out and put another CD in if you want. You can then put the LiveCD back in. Knoppix probably has a similar feature.

      --
      Time makes more converts than reason
  5. Does more really equal better? by Darth_brooks · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's nice that you can cram every single package under the sun onto a DVD, but does it really make "knoppix" any better? I mean, the review basically says "OMG Packages! I can run teh Gnome & Firefox, then KDE and Konq! This makes knoppix awesome!!!

    I'm more interested in what the 4.0 "mini" release.

    --
    There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
  6. Re:maybe im alone on this one by (1+-sqrt(5))*(2**-1) · · Score: 4, Interesting
    [I]t has tons of packages. Pretty much everything you'd expect.
    That said, I really hope they put LaTeX back in the DVD version; LaTeX was my main motivation for booting up Knoppix at school.
  7. Waiting for an actual review by Stauf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I really don't like it when people pass of a blog entry as a review. The author tells us that "There are simply tons of packages on this DVD", and spends three paragraphs (about a third of the 'review') describing ClamAV and how to use it - something which has little or nothing to do with Knoppix on DVD apart from that fact that it's included.

    Nothing against Kyle Rankin and his blog of course, he's doing what blogs do. And it is nice to know I can now run Gnome. But shame on you Mr. IdleTime.

  8. I'm more interested in hyper-threaded P4 support by Jetson · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have one PC with a hyper-threading P4 and the recent Knoppix and Ubuntu live CD's I've tried lately all fail to boot. The LILO screen works and the kernel loads, but almost immediately I get a flood of error messages about IRQ 18 and then the kernels all hang or slowly repeat the errors over and over again.

  9. Re:Get on those torrents by benna · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How would any acronyms come into the general lexicon then?

    --
    "It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
  10. Re:DVD Compression? by XanC · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Along the lines of what our friend at -1 said, having uncompressed data on the DVD isn't an automatic win.

    Suppose you can read 10M/s from the disc. If it's uncompressed, that's exactly what your throughput is. What if you get 2:1 compression (at least for that piece of data)? Suddenly your effective throughput is 20M/s.

    Obviously this is a tradeoff between media speed and CPU/memory. But it's very likely that the Knoppix DVD contains a compressed filesystem to increase performance.

  11. Re:At the other end of the spectrum ... by nicktripp · · Score: 2, Interesting

    White Dwarf Linux loads in only 13MB of Flash memory but has more than enough features and apps to run an embedded system. Just another option to be considered while they're being tossed out.

  12. So ugly by Alioth · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Knoppix is fantastic - it's been a great system-saver and diagnostic tool, as well as my way of making a ghosting system.

    My only complaint is if you let it load the desktop, the desktop is incredibly ugly - busy amateurish backgrounds, and almost always the ugliest KDE themes. I can see Knoppix putting off a lot of people who would otherwise move to Linux when they see the awful desktop theme in Knoppix. Can't they make it simple and elegant like Red Hat's Bluecurve?

  13. Is the DVD layout Extensible? Compressed? by billstewart · · Score: 2, Interesting
    UnionFS gets rave reviews, but is it possible to write the DVD in some extensible format that lets you burn the basic Knoppix onto it and then burn some extra data tracks for other applications (and then mount them with UnionFS or whatever)? That would make it easy to upgrade packages and to add a bunch of user data onto the basic distro, without having to rebuild your own.

    Also, I'm curious if the files are compressed? It's a tradeoff of storage and disk read speed vs. CPU speed, and unlike CDs, I'm not sure if it's a win, but DVDs only have ~4.7GB for regular or 8.5 for double-layer, so you'll run out of space after a while :-)

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  14. Re:maybe im alone on this one by CastrTroy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I find that making math formulas in OO.o works pretty well. It's also a lot easier if you're doing a lot of regular typing with a few formulas thrown in. I can't stand the Equation Editor for microsoft word. The fact that you have to click to do just about anything is what makes it terrible. OO.o is far superior in this respect, and I think that if science/math/eng. students tried it, they would love it for this simple reason.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  15. Donations? by jlseagull · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does anyone know a place to donate to the people that produce Knoppix? It's saved my butt quite a lot, and it's an easy way to show people what Linux can do.

    --
    'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
  16. Re:yeah but.... by kesuki · · Score: 2, Interesting

    $41 for a piece of plastic which reads DVDs and doesn't burn them

    Your bad read my post, they should all be 16x Dual layer, dual format DVD burners. I researched the specific model about 6 months ago, and I own one, But at the time I ordered I payed $60. I burn between 6-10 DVDs a month and have had 0 coasters, even though I buy imation spindle media at super 30 cents a disc 'close out prices' at office max.

    They weaknesses they have are only 8X -r burning speed, and only 2.4x dual layer burn speed. The strengths include a very low media costering rate, even with media higher priced drives have a 20% failure rate on.

    Don't buy by brand, I had a total POS Nec 20x cd-burner, but I'm 100% satisfied with the quality of this model DVD burner. The best thing to do is research products, and when a company has a total winner of a product you buy that one.. Sometimes I try to stick with a particular company because I know they have better business practices than thier competitors, but even then I reasearch which model to buy.

    You probably though I meant a DVD-rom drive because you see DVD-burners selling for $80-$100 at retail.. Well, I knew from experience DVD burners were abotu ready to 'hit the floor' in terms of pricing 6 months ago so I started reaserching hard for good models.. This NEC isn't the only good model I found, it just happens to be the cheapest of the good models I found then

  17. Re:maybe im alone on this one by darkonc · · Score: 2, Interesting
    He's a bit lax on keeping the sources link up to date, but some of the Knoppix packages have shown up in the Debin tree (at least, they show up in dpkg searches when running knoppix ).

    He also offers to ship of a CD (or two) full of sources to anybody who mails him a couple of bucks to cover mailing.

    My guess is that he mostly just works with the debian binaries, himself.

    --
    Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.