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Knoppix 7.2 Released
hypnosec writes "Knoppix 7.2 has been released for public testing — unlike its predecessor, Knoppix 7.1, which was only made available through the annual Linux Magazine CeBIT edition. Based on Debian "Wheezy", Knoppix 7.2 packs quite a few new features, including newer desktop packages from Debian/testing and Debian/unstable Jessie. The latest version uses the Linux 3.9 kernel and xorg 7.7, and comes loaded with LibreOffice 4.0, GIMP 2.8, Chromium 27 (and Firefox/Iceweasel 21), Wine 1.5, and Virtualbox version 4.2.10. It uses LXDE by default. For users who still want to go for KDE or GNOME, version 4.8.4 and 3.4.2 of the respective desktops are available from the Knoppix DVD."
I'm unaware of any advancements that have come out of Knoppix other than the live CD technology. Which was eventually replaced by something by someone else.
I use it all the time for recovering lost data on crashed windows machines. All my friends think I'm a genius, but no. I just boot into Knoppix and copy their "lost" data onto a thumb drive. Couldn't be easier. Thanks Knoppix!
I was going to say, I haven't heard any buzz about Knoppix for about five years or so. But it looks like it's still being actively maintained and enhanced. I might check it out for my Windows PC at home - then I won't have to worry about dual boot hassles.
I do the same thing with the Kubuntu Live DVD version installed on a thumb drive. It tends to have better driver support, especially wifi.
I remember using Knoppix for the first time in 2004. I was super excited about finally finding a Linux distro that would work out of the box on one of my PCs. Almost 10 years later, it's impressive that Knoppix still occupies its niche--a portable desktop environment for use in emergencies or when you need such a thing without leaving a footprint.
I had a Knoppix CD with me several years ago and got stranded in an airport for around 8 hours due to a cancelled flight. At this time free wi-fi was no prevalent, even in the airport lounges. However the carrier decided to let me in to their lounge and enjoy the facilities during the long wait. Inside the lounge were a bank of computers that users could buy internet time on for some exorbitant fee. However, they had no security around them and the CD drive and BIOS were freely accessible. Thank you Knoppix for a few hours of free internet.... :-)
The software included is specifically useful for recovery, the desktop is non-arcane and reasonably complete yet light, these facts make it very useful.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Since I discovered Knoppix so many years ago I lost count now, I've never been without a disc. It's come in useful for such diverse projects as forensic recovery prep to running full-install desktops on a variety of gear. Including the most kickarse Dell Dimension upgrade I've ever done, which was basically a new board, dual quad-Xeon, 16GB of RAM, twelve-head video with 4GB GDDR3 between four cards, and so many flight controllers, pedals and freakish-looking throttle controls I began to wonder if I was building someone a backend for their flight simulator cave...
I was right.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I still use Knoppix when I just want to try one of the preinstalled packages. It comes with more software than any other live Linux DVD. Knoppix is still my goto live Linux system because its file structure is much simpler than other live Linux distributions (kernel, initial ramdisk and one or two big filesystem image files).
I believe it's also popular with vision impaired people, because it comes with an accessibility enhanced desktop environment named Adriane (which is also the first name of Klaus Knopper's wife).
I love Knoppix as my boot to DVD linux. I'm have a Macbook retina which means no internal DVD. I'd like to have Linux that boots. I've tried some of the EFI solutions... Does anyone have a Linux that works well on the retina for USB boot? Is there some variant of Knoppix that's tested to work?
Meanwhile there are alternatives/derivates that cater even more to system recovery and sysadmin use, the best is maybe GRML - http://www.grml.org
It's still my go to system on a disk whenever anyone has issues with windows, or (much more rare) linux computers.
I've tried all kinds of 'other' live cd's Knoppix was the first, and is still, imo, the best.
I think my oldest knoppix cd is 3, or maybe earlier.
jaz
Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans. No-one sees motorcycles
It's 2013 and Windows can still shit the bed without any recovery method except reinstalling or (maybe) Linux.
P.S. Microsoft spent $100 billion developing Windows.
...Ok I am really missing something. I used to love knoppix, but now everything is a live CD. I am as likely to quickly get a copy of Ubuntu Live CD running off a stick to get up and running quickly.(although this does have the advantage of having mdadm on the disk). In fact a full installation of Ubuntu onto a pen drive is more useful.
There is not much information about flash-knoppix, and how it is different from say "startup disk creator"...and I noticed this from the text description "In order to create a bootable USB-medium (memory flashdisk, SD-card, digital camera with USB connector, cellphone with microSD, ...)," Okay I have never thought about using the MicroSD in my cell phone that is incredibly cool.
With my ultrafast DSL connection.
I guess I'll go for plan B.
2nd
For recovery how does Knoppix compare with these:
http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/
http://lifehacker.com/5984707/five-best-system-rescue-discs
Yes knoppix is one of the options listed in the latter article but there's no comparison or review really being made.
I was curious myself and I couldn't take it any more, just had to find out how it runs these days myself so I'm actually typing this up on KNOPPIX 7.2 right now. I've run it plenty of times in virtual machines, but I haven't tried it out on bare hardware in years. I was fascinated with KNOPPIX back when I was still learning Linux, and in fact in was one of the primary ways I learned Linux and its command line. One of the things I was never a fan of in KNOPPIX and which hasn't really changed is its all-or-nothing approach: you either get a CD that might not have all that you need (for example, no KDE-based version), or a DVD that literally has everything--and suffers with some pretty messy menus and unwanted crap (GNOME 3...).
Its boot speed is very fast... even faster than I remember it (by quite a bit). It has that same familiar "initiating startup sequence..." audio clip, though it boots so quickly it's kind of odd; by the time the clip plays, it's already about to load X.org and the desktop! When the system is done booting into LXDE (CD or DVD version) and ready to go, it consumes only 90-95MB RAM, which is incredibly light for a live distribution. KNOPPIX connected properly to a Wi-Fi network using the Broadcom BCM4318 (which, due to nonfree firmware, has proven over time to be a real bitch to get set up in almost every distribution I've ever tried).
Overall... I would say that this is the same great KNOPPIX that I remember; it definitely still has enough to set itself apart from the rest If you want a lightweight (in terms of memory) truly general-purpose distribution that works well as a recovery disc, with a fully-functional and fully-configured graphical environment to top it off, KNOPPIX won't disappoint. I'm impressed.
Finnix is also excellent if you do not want or need a desktop environment.
Well, KNOPPIX is still being actively developed, for one thing.
From the Ubuntu Rescue Remix web site:
I am officially on hiatus and will not be providing support for the Rescue Remix in the future. If you would like to continue the project, please contact me.
On top of that, KNOPPIX has been around for much longer and has been highly influential, it practically made live CDs a reality, and it continues its excellence to this day. Basically, it has an excellent track record.
On the Lifehacker article you linked to, the only one that's even in KNOPPIX's league in terms of usefulness and quality is the generically-named SystemRescueCD. The Ultimate Boot CD can be occasionally be useful to have on hand, but it is really just a CD containing lots of small boot disks. The UBCD contains Parted Magic (an excellent distribution for hard drive partitioning), but you're really better off just getting the official Parted Magic release--it's frequently updated, and the version included in the UBCD tends to be outdated often. The Debian-based Finnix is my favorite "no-bullshit" rescue/utility distribution for when I just want something fast and do not want or need a GUI.
Grml and Plop Linux are also nice, but I don't really use them myself. RIP (Recovery Is Possible) is also a pretty good one based on Slackware AFAIK, but again, I don't tend to use it myself (and it seems to get more infrequent updates). Another Slackware based distribution, somewhat like a Slackware version of KNOPPIX, is Slax; it's great as a fast, lightweight, general-purpose live CD, but it tends to have much less installed than KNOPPIX.
They have lots of mirrors. Just try a different one.
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html
I don't know, but it's not necessary to choose between them. You can start with Knoppix. If Knoppix cannot recognize a required device; try a few of the others.
In my experience, if Knoppix doesn't have the driver -- none of the common rescue disks have the driver, though.
Last I checked what was sorely lacking was a PVSCSI driver and a VMXNET3 driver For rescuing virtual machines with Knoppix.
Oh, I should mention a few more better general-purpose live distros that would make excellent recovery discs: aptosid and the forked siduction, and the originally heavily KNOPPIX-inspired KANOTIX. All are excellent, and each one has its pros and cons. All three are Debian-based.
it's frequently updated, and the version included in the UBCD tends to be outdated often.
Yeah... for system maintenance purposes; I would generally prefer to have 3 CDs
Does it use the bfs scheduler?
That would seem to be a no-brainer (no pun intended) for a live cd.
Okay, I can understand a major release of one of the popular Linux distros being covered here - Debian, Fedora, RedHat, Ubuntu, Mint, Mageia/Mandriva, Slackware, Gentoo, Centos, OEL.
But Knoppix? WTF? Then why would any distro not be covered? Normally, the right answer to that one is that there are >600 distros, so it would be ridiculous to cover all or even most of them. But if you're gonna cover Knoppix, then why not other obscure distros, such as Sacix, Hikarunix, Xubuntu, gNewSense, Pentoo, Manjaro, TurboLinux, Qubes, Miracle Linux, Salix, Porteus or Nitrix?
Assuming your BIOS has the option to boot from USB... yes?
I probably won't get around to using it, but a couple of years ago I had a disk get its Host Protected Area set (by a maliciously well-intentioned external drive enclosure), and after I couldn't fix it, I went to my friend the late Hugh Daniel, and he and I spent a long evening trying to get the Linux HPA tools to work, rebuilt Linux kernels a couple of times, consumed lots of pizza, and only succeeded in making the HPA bigger, never smaller. The tools just weren't good enough, and the documentation on HPA was deliberately unavailable. Fixing a 500 GB PATA drive is probably not worth it at this point, but it'd be a fun hack to do in memory of Hugh.
For those of you who've never met HPA before, it's a different set of BIOS interrupts for talking to disk drives which let you allocate space that Windows can't touch, so you can do things like hide a system-restore partition on the drive, or turn a 200 GB drive into a 128 GB drive (so an old computer that can't read LBA can at least use the 128 GB it understands), or turn a 250 GB drive with bad blocks into a 200 GB drive without them (so you can sell the stuff that didn't pass quality control.) In my case, I had an old Maxtor 200GB external USB drive that was failing from too many bad blocks, so I replaced the disk with a new 500GB one. The drive enclosure didn't recognize the disk, so it wrote a 300 GB HPA to knock it down to the same 200 GB size of the original one.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Get off my lawn, punk! I mean, if you're trolling, fine, have fun, and Ubuntu livecds have been good enough to use them instead of Knoppix for the last few years, but it was THE standard save-your-ass repair tool to keep around.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's not realistic to believe that a USB drive enclosure would put a HPA on a disk drive. If a BIOS doesn't understand the drive size, the size is simply truncated to the maximum size the BIOS does understand.
The HPA security feature is part of the ATAPI 4 and above security feature set devised by the T13 committee. The HPA is adjusted by adjusting the MAS (maximum addressable sector) in relation to the MNA (maximum native address) of the drive.
The adjustment is made via the P.A.R.T.I.E.S specification BIOS calls (an ANSI standard) to the B.E.E.R (Boot Extension Engineering Record) sector of the drive. This sector records all the semi-fixed parameters of the drive, and resides adjacent to the MAS.
Unless the 'persistent' flag is specifically set, the HPA has to be reset each drive power cycle. Therefore, and this does work, if you hot-cycle the drive power, the HPA will usually disappear.
There is another ATAPI (also adopted by SATA) feature called freeze-lock, which freezes the security feature set commands. Freeze-lock cannot be made persistent, so power-cycling always necessitates that freeze-lock be rest by the BIOS (or by hdparm).
When a bios sets a HPA, it does so by way of a password hard-coded into the bios. These passwords are 256 bytes, zero-padded to the boundary. There's a little program, BXDR, that can be used to adjust, set and unset certain ATAPI security features.
Here's to you, Hugh! I hope you're in peace.