Uber-popular Linux live CD Knoppix will split into a “lite” version, optimized for older computer, and a “maximum” version targetting newer machines, which contains more Debian packages.
Knoppix Will Split into 2 Editions
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
Technology Executive • Web Developer • Father • Foodie • Music Snob • OS enthusiast
Follow me on Mastodon @[email protected]
I don’t think KDE is “light” or suitable for older computers. Anyway, I always boot Knoppix with “knoppix26 desktop=icewm lang=en”.
There’s GNOME live cd distro called GNOPIX 🙂
http://www.gnoppix.org/
I couldn’t burn Knoppix because my old CD couldn’t contain the size of the ISO image..
You know, CDR’s are like 8 cents apiece, you could just snag a fresh pack and get the full Distro on there…
Gnoppix is now nothing more anymore than a rebranded Ubuntu Live CD.
You know, CDR’s are like 8 cents apiece, you could just snag a fresh pack and get the full Distro on there…
Unless it’s his CD-ROM/RW drive, in which case they’re not that much more expensive than 8 cents these days
Hell, you can probably get them free inside boxes of lucky charms these days. Unless you’re living on food stamps or something, I don’t know why somebody would settle for crappy hardware when it runs so cheap.
If you want a debian-based GNOME Live CD, try the Ubuntu Live CD. It’s x86 only, just like Knoppix is (I believe it’s based on Knoppix), but that should suit most people.
Adam or Eugenia:
Uber-popular Linux
The correct german form is “Über”. If you don’t want to fiddle around with Umlaut characters because they are not on your keyboard, please write “Ueber”, but please change it. It’s just so… well “uber” always reminds me of those l33t h4x0r scirpt kiidei woh aer even unabel to comprehend complex sentences in their own language, let alone the ability to type correctly or even know a foreign language.
Try morphix http://www.morphix.org/modules/news/ think, a modular version of knoppix. You can use one of the pre-made CDs or roll your own!
Just wanted to say that I always learn a lot from reading the comments to these articles! I always wondered if I could get Knoppix to run on a very old P100 (tried once and it was miserable), now I have fresh ideas. Thanks! -MG.
Knoppix 3.3 booted and ran on my system with no sweat and no special overrides.
Knoppix 3.6 won’t boot on my system without using the “noapic” override. And since I changed my old Dell monitor for an ever older ViewSonic 6, the default Knoppix X config doesn’t work without tweaking the horizontal refresh. And I had a couple other problems with the latest Knoppix, too.
I hate it when later versions of a system are worse than the earlier ones.
It’s like when I tried to install Red Hat 7.3, 8.0 and Mandrake on my secondary machine, an old Compaq Deskpro 4000. Red Hat 7.0 would blow on the machine in 20 minutes with no trouble. NONE of the later distros will install because every single one of them is totally unable to read the partition table on the Maxtor 30GB drive – even when they themselves create and initialize the partition table. Obviously something about the kernel IDE drivers was changed after Red Hat 7.0 which simply and totally conflicts with how the (admittedly crappy) Compaq reports the disk geometry.
Since version 3.5 Knoppix has no more lvm tools installed. I understand that lvm (or evms) is not of high demand for it’s target audience but it was a great rescue cd for me.
I am sorry (really I am) that the latest versions do not work on your hardware but Knoppix (& others) are moving forward. They can not conceivably add the latest & greatest kernels, drivers, & software and have it work for all hardware. The Knoppix developers are really trying their best and the Knoppix.net forums are also trying their best. I will admit that I was bummed out when either Knoppix 3.4 or 3.6 enabled DMA for all IDE devices by default which prevents Knoppix from loading on PCs with chipsets prior to the Intel Petium 200MMX era. But if adding DMA speeds up Knoppix on newer PCs, in fact practically all PCs less than 4 years old, then I can see why it was done.
The oldest PC I booted the Knoppix CD on was a Pentium 75MHz with 32MB RAM. I admit that it was only a command line sesion & not KDE. The oldest machine that I got to run Knoppix with KDE was a P-200 128MB RAM. I have had no problems running icewm on a P-133 128MB compaq deskpro if I use the boot cheat codes: knoppix nodma desktop=icewm. Visit the Knoppix.net forums for some help & feel free to ask questions but please do a search for it first.
You will not find any RTFM!!! or l33t linux dudes dissing newbies at the Knoppix.net forums.
Well, the correct 1337 form is uber, or ub3r, even! Remember the 1337 h4x0r will not type a character that requires more than two keystrokes
Back on topic, I think splitting knoppix is a great idea, as Knoppix is getting friggin huge, which my Athlon XP 3200+ can handle fine (Knoppix even correctly detects and configures my Nforce 2 board! yay!) My 600mhz PIII runs Knoppix like molasses though…
sounds like a good idea — knoppix is great, and this can only make it better.
My wish list is simple.
Firefox
Kate
gcc
I find that is all I do with Linux. That would be my perfect LiveCD.
“It would be extremely helpful if vendors would just publish example driver source code for new hardware under a free licence, but most of them seem to just wait for Linux developers to find out everything on their own.”
I guess that says it all. It’s hard for Knopper to pay attention to minute details when he has to worry about vendors.
As for the size of the distro, I’m gratefull it won’t end up like Quantian.
do look at some live distros based on xfce. i feel the xfce WM has really improved in its 4.x version. 2 distros that i checked out and liked were xfld http://xfld.org/Xfld/en/index.html , which is based on knoppix and luit linux http://luitlinux.sarovar.org , which is based on damn small linux. Luit runs comfortably on a pentium II with 64 MB of RAM (have tested it). Luit also fits on a 50MB cd.. plus there are 2 archives that can be merged into the ISO to get additional packages (open office, Firefox, etc .. see the site). the merging makes the ISO 180MB. I feel luit is extremely promising. it is very light, yet doesnt lack eyecandy (well.. relatively).
“uber” in this context is already an English term derived from the German “über”. Call it borrowed, call it derived; but “uber” without the umlaut should suffice when it is used in English, much less English commonspeak.