Knoppix
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Knoppix 4.0 |
|
| Website: | knopper.net/knoppix |
| Company/ developer: |
Klaus Knopper |
| OS family: | Linux |
| Source model: | Open source |
| Latest stable release: | 5.0.1 / June 2, 2006 |
| Available language(s): | German and English (French with Kaella) |
|---|---|
| Kernel type: | Monolithic kernel |
| License: | Various |
| Working state: | Current |
Knoppix, also spelled as KNOPPIX, is a computer operating system which can be used as a live CD. It is a Debian based Linux distribution, developed by Linux consultant Klaus Knopper.
When repairing systems with non-booting hard drives, live CD operating systems like Knoppix are a much more comfortable environment than the previous solution of boot floppies, thanks to the complete graphical environment and networking.
Although Knoppix is primarily designed to be used as a live CD, it can also be installed on a hard disk like a typical operating system. Computers that support booting from USB devices can load Knoppix from USB flash drives and memory cards.
There are two main editions of Knoppix: the traditional Compact Disc (700 megabytes) edition and the DVD (4.7 gigabytes) "Maxi" edition. Each of these main editions have two language-specific editions. One language is English and the other is German.
When starting a program it is loaded from the optical disc and decompressed into a RAM drive. The decompression is transparent and on-the-fly.
Knoppix mostly consists of free software, but also includes proprietary software.
Contents |
[edit] Usage
There are several possible uses of the Knoppix live CD:
- an introduction to Linux, especially as a desktop operating system
- in-store testing to determine whether a computer system is compatible with Linux before purchase
- providing a safe Web browsing environment that is less susceptible to viruses, privacy invasion and data loss
- restoring a system with a corrupted operating system or some of its data
- bootstrapping an operating system installation
- forensic investigation on hard drives
[edit] Contents
More than 1000 software packages are included on the CD edition and more than 2600 are included on the DVD edition. Up to 9 gigabytes can be stored on the DVD in compressed form. These packages include:
- Part of KDE, the default desktop environment; includes the Konqueror web browser and the Kmail e-mail client
- XMMS, with MPEG video, MP3 audio, and Ogg Vorbis audio playback support
- Internet access software, including the KPPP dialer, ISDN utilities and WLAN
- The Mozilla Firefox web browser
- K3b, for CD (and DVD) authoring and backup
- The GIMP, an image-manipulation program
- Tools for data rescue and system repair
- Network analysis and administration tools
- OpenOffice.org, a comprehensive office suite
- Many programming and development tools
[edit] Requirements
There are some requirements for a computer to be able to run Knoppix, which include:
- A CD-ROM drive
- To start KDE, as happens by default, about 96 MB of RAM is required.
[edit] Saving changes in the environment
Prior to Knoppix 3.8.2, any documents or settings a user created would disappear upon reboot. This lack of permanence made it necessary to save documents explicitly to a hard drive partition, over the network, or to some removable medium, such as a USB thumbdrive.
It was also possible to set up a "persistent home directory", wherein any documents or settings written to the user's home directory would automatically be redirected to a hard drive or removable medium, which could be automatically mounted on bootup. What is stored there physically is a file called knoppix.img. The file is used to simulate a file system into which files are written for later use. This is transparent for the user. What the user perceives is that it is possible to write files to the home directory.
Since Knoppix 3.8.1, a UnionFS filesystem transparently saves any new or changed files to a writable filesystem - one which can reside either in memory (ramdisk) or on a hard disk, USB thumbdrive, etc.
This means that the user can modify the software installed on the Knoppix system, such as by using APT to install or update software.
By carrying a Knoppix CD and a USB thumbdrive, a user can have the same environment, programs, settings, and data available on any computer.
[edit] Boot options
When using Knoppix as a live CD, boot options, also known as cheat codes, can be used to override a default setting or automatic hardware detection when it fails. For example, the user may wish to boot into a plain console, or proceed without SCSI support. For this, Knoppix allows the user to enter one or more cheat codes at the prompt before booting. If the user doesn't enter a cheat code, or if no key is pressed before the timeout, Knoppix will boot with its default options. For example, to set the language to French rather than the default, one would type:
knoppix lang=fr
[edit] Popularity
Knoppix is reported to be one of the most popular LiveCD Linux distributions[1]. There are factors that contribute to the popularity of Knoppix:
- Knoppix was one of the first LiveCDs available, and is known as the "original" Debian-based LiveCD
- Its extensive hardware detection allows most systems to start Knoppix without any configuration
- Its ability to automatically connect to most kinds of networks
- Its utilities for system repair and troubleshooting
[edit] Drawbacks
Knoppix has some important drawbacks:
- Knoppix works on a fairly high number of PCs or laptops, but not all. The automatic hardware detection cannot cope with all hardware, and sometimes the drivers used will not be optimal. Knoppix has difficulty recognizing some cards made before 1998, or motherboards with a BIOS made before 2002. (In some cases, manual configuration with codes entered at boot time can overcome problems with automatic detection.)
- Memory usage: By default, Knoppix runs the KDE environment, requiring at least 128 MB of RAM and substantial startup time; CD and DVD drives are typically slower than hard drives, particularly when used as boot devices for uncompressing a live operating system on the fly.
[edit] Versions
Starting from version 4.0, Knoppix has been split into a DVD "maxi" edition (with over 9GB of software), and a CD "light" edition, both developed in parallel. The first release of Knoppix 5.0 was available to visitors of CeBIT in DVD form. Public editions of 5.0 are now available.
| Knoppix version | Release date |
| 3.1 | 19 January 2003 |
| 3.2 | 26 July 2003 |
| 3.3 | 16 February 2004 |
| 3.4 | 17 May 2004 |
| 3.6 | 16 August 2004 |
| 3.7 | 9 December 2004 |
| 3.8.2 | 12 May 2005 |
| 3.9 | 1 June 2005 |
| 4.0 | 22 June 2005 |
| 4.0 updated | 16 August 2005 |
| 4.0.2 | 23 September 2005 |
| 5.0 | 25 February 2006 |
| 5.0.1 | 2 June 2006 |
[edit] Variations
- Accelerated-KNOPPIX - takes only 60 seconds or less for a boot up from CD (depending on the hardware used)
- Arabbix, an old project tasked with bringing forth a fully Arabized LiveCD distribution.
- ASork, which provides tools for music production.
- Auditor Security Collection, intended to test the security of networks.
- BioKnoppix, targeted for molecular biologists.
- Buildix is oriented on an agile development infrastructure with Trac, Subversion and CruiseControl.
- ClusterKnoppix, which uses openMosix
- Quantian is a variation of clusterKnoppix which adds numerous scientific and quantitative applications.
- Damn Small Linux
- eduKnoppix is aimed at Italian primary schools. It focuses on children aged between 8-15, and thus contains a lot of educational software.
- Feather Linux, which fits on a USB keydrive and mini-CD.
- Flonix USB Edition, an old liveCD
- Games Knoppix, which contains a lot of games.
- Gnoware
- GNUstep, including GNUstep
- grml, targeted at sysadmins, texttool-users and geeks.
- Guadalinex, Spanish
- Hikarunix, which provides a full study/play environment for Go.
- INSERT, which is an acronym for INside SEcurity Rescue Toolkit. It fits on a Mini-Live CD and is focused on security and system repairs.
- Jux, which is a German version aimed at children and contains the Flash Player and the Squeak graphical programming environment.
- Kanotix, which is partially based on Knoppix, but mostly based on Debian Sid.
- KnopILS, an excellent Italian version.
- Knoppix STD (Security Tools Distribution), which focuses on computer security tools.
- KnoppMyth is a distro that attempts to make the Linux and MythTV installation as trivial as possible.
- Kurumin, in Brazilian Portuguese
- Mediainlinux, a multimedia production platform.
- MeNTOPPIX, which looks more like Windows XP.
- Morphix is a modular distribution with four basic variations and the ability to contruct more variations easily using a module system.
- Musix GNU+Linux, specifically for musicians
- Oralux, for visually impaired persons
- ParallelKnoppix, with support for netbooting (via PXE) and Message Passing Interface cluster off a single master node.
- Snal Linux is non-graphical and uses openMosix.
- VigyaanCD, which contains Vigyaan, an electronic workbench for bioinformatics, computational biology and computational chemistry.
- Xarnoppix
[edit] Sources
- ^ DistroWatch has KNOPPIX as the third LiveCD Linux distribution appearing in their Page Hits chart, as of October 4 2006.
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Granneman, Scott. Hacking Knoppix. John Wiley & Sons (2005), ISBN 0-7645-9784-1.
- Rankin, Kyle. Knoppix Hacks. O'Reilly (2004), ISBN 0-596-00787-6.
[edit] External links
[edit] News articles
- Cameron Laird: Knoppix gives bootable, one-disk Linux (IBM developer works)
- Distrowatch.com interview with Klaus Knopper
- System recovery with Knoppix (IBM developer works)
- Fun with Knoppix
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