Knoppix 3.4 Has Landed
The Knoppix live CD has justly
earned a reputation of staging a mini-revolution in our Linux world. By
delivering an instant and portable Linux operating system that anybody
could use without having to go through a sharp learning curve, the
Knoppix developers have not only provided a superb rescue tool for
Linux power users, they have also created the best possible advocacy
tool to entice computer users not yet familiar with Linux. And although
more than a hundred Knoppix clones have sprouted all over the Internet
in the last year alone, none of them has surpassed the popularity of
the original king of the Linux live CDs. The much awaited Knoppix 3.4
was released last week, inclusive of all the latest software packages,
and for the first time, kernel 2.6.
What's new in Knoppix 3.4? The lion's share of the development work is done by Klaus Knopper (the founder of Knoppix), Christian Perle and Fabian Franz, and much of their effort goes into one of the following four areas: software updates, hardware auto-detection, the "cloop" compressed files system, and the "knoppix-installer".
- Software package updates. Although Knoppix releases
are essentially snapshots of the Debian Sid (unstable) branch at the
time of the release, it is still a pleasure to see so much up-to-date
software on the CD. As an example, the latest release of Knoppix comes
with some of the best desktop applications, including OpenOffice.org
1.1.1, GIMP 2.0.1, Gaim 0.77, xine-lib 1-rc4 and XMMS 1.2.10, all of
which are the latest available versions at the time of writing. As for
server-specific packages, their versions are just slightly behind, in
line with Debian's policy of using only well-tested packages for
important tasks. There is a choice of two kernels now, the default
kernel remains at 2.4.26, but unless you have a problem with a
particular piece of hardware, there is no reason not to boot into the
shiny new 2.6.5 (by specifying "kernel26" at boot prompt). The default
desktop is KDE (version 3.2.2). Back in the days of Knoppix 3.1, it was
possible to fit both of the two most popular desktop environments onto
the CD, but with the rapid growth of KDE and GNOME, plus the inclusion
of two kernels, the choice of desktops is now limited to KDE, and a
handful of low-resource ones, such as Fluxbox, IceWM, WindowMaker, and
XFce (version 3.8.18). Unfortunately, some applications that were
present in Knoppix 3.3 had to go; the most noticeable victims of the
"downsizing" process were KOffice and TeTeX.
- Hardware autodetection. The hardware autodetection
modules were the main reason of the instant popularity of Knoppix and
it is nice to see the scripts are being continuously updated to include
some of the latest devices from hardware manufacturers. While the
Knoppix changelog tends to be dry and skimpy on details about support
for newly added hardware, you can rest assured that this is one aspect
of Knoppix that won't get neglected. In those cases where a particular
piece of hardware is not detected correctly, it is best to get in touch
with the developers on the debian-knoppix
mailing list and provide information about the specific hardware -
in most cases it will be added to the hardware database rather quickly.
- Cloop compressed file system. Cloop is a kernel
module that ads support for a compressed, read-only block device.
Thanks to cloop, the Knoppix CD normally holds almost 3 times as much
software as is the physical capacity of the CD. This fact not only
enables the developers to place more software on the disk, the
compression also speeds up data transfer between the CD-reading device
and RAM. Cloop was originally developed by the LNX-BBC project, but has now become
an integral part of the development of Knoppix. And despite the
existence of other compressed file systems (e.g. SquashFS, CramFS,
JFFS2...), cloop has become a de facto standard among many Linux
developers thanks to the popularity of Knoppix and Knoppix-based live
CDs.
- Hard disk installer. Although the experimental hard disk installer is not officially endorsed by the Knoppix project (after all, the primary purpose of Knoppix is to serve as a bootable live CD), many users find it hard to resist the desire to give Knoppix a permanent home on their hard disks. The curses-based menu-driven installer has undergone substantial changes since the early days and, unless one chooses the expert route, installing Knoppix on the hard disk is a very simple and straightforward procedure. The installation is largely automated; the installer even sets up lilo with the choice of either of the two available kernels, as well as Windows, if present on the hard disk. Bear in mind, though, that once you boot Knoppix from a partition on a hard disk, it effectively becomes Debian Sid, so any future requests for help should be directed to Debian mailing lists, rather than to Knoppix forums.
Knoppix 3.4 continues in the tradition of excellence by providing many
of the latest open source packages on the Knoppix CD, by continuously
adding new hardware to its extensive hardware database, and by
developing interesting new features. As the undisputed leader among
Linux live CDs, Knoppix is an indispensable rescue disk, a
demonstration tool, and a quick Debian installer all-in-one. An already
remarkable product has just gotten better.
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