KNOPPIX: Whatever happened to it?

[beanburrito]

Poor KNOPPIX was/is a really nice distro way back when. I remember using it as sort of a swiss army knife on various systems as a LiveCD. It was jam packed with so much stuff it was amazing.

It's sad to see it's not being developed anymore. (according to Distrowatch) I wonder whatever happened to it?

Did you ever use Knoppix?

 

[craigevil]

The website and forum are still available, the forum even has a couple of posts from this year.

 

[MikeWalsh]

@beanburrito :-

I wouldn't put too much faith in what DistroWatch says.

They like to give the impression that THEY are the ones who do all the research on Linux distros. NOTHING could be further from the truth. If no "official" party - representing any particular distro - doesn't submit a listing for "consideration", then that distro doesn't get a mention.

And their staff don't exactly go out of their way to respond to requests / submissions.

We had real issues a few years back, trying to get an updated listing for Puppy back on the rankings. Admittedly, in the last five years, we've had COVID; the original founder of the Puppy Forums passed away (and everything ground to a halt for 2-3 months); we had to get the current site up-and-running; "A.I" is seemingly taking over everything; lots of big new exciting 'gaming' distros have been stealing all the headlines.....etc., etc.

It's perhaps understandable that a small, lightweight, "hobbyist" distro doesn't exactly get top priority in the message queue, but it took more than 20 emails, and nearly a year before the Distrowatch team could even be bothered to respond to our submitter....

Personally, I have a less than stellar impression of THEM.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

Trust me; Klaus Knopper is still working his magic. But, like the rest of us, the guy is getting older.....and the enthusiasm wanes over time. He still puts out new releases, but those releases are getting further & further apart.

I booted into my own Knoppix "install" - on a 64GB SanDisk 'Fit' thumbdrive - just a few days ago. Ya gotta make sure the volume ain't too loud, though.....'cos that "Engaging launch control!" can be a real shocker for the unwary!


Mike.

 

[NicWelds]

Knoppix was one of my first experience with Linux. Running right off a CD without having to modify my family computer was nice.

 

[piorunz]

Distrowatch says last release 8.6.1 has taken place in 2019:

Distribution Release: KNOPPIX 8.6.1 (DistroWatch.com News)

News and feature lists of Linux and BSD distributions.

distrowatch.com

For some reason they missed one more release from 2021:

KNOPPIX 9.1

After that, one more release has been announced as an exclusive to a printed magazine and not available to download:

KNOPPIX 9.2 in Linux-User & Linux Magazin

Since then, there is nothing. No release in last 5 years.
I guess it's fair to say distro is discontinued.

 

[wizardfromoz]

You could always try Gnoppix - based on Debian since 2003, same sort of philosophy as Knoppix.

Like Knoppix, it has ADRIANE (Klaus Knopper's wife, Adriane, is visually impaired).

It's available in the 25 series with Xfce, and the 26 series with KDE.

Just a thought.

Wizard

Edit - modified my first line after research.

 

[KGIII]

Knoppix is stuck in my mind for two reasons.

1. It was the first live Linux that I ever tried.
2. For unknown reasons, it ate my Windows MBR - even though I did nothing to tell it to even mount the drive.

I was pretty disappointed. I had better luck when I did the same with Ubuntu.

To be fair, I tried it when it was very new. It popped up on Slashdot, and I decided to give it a test run. To this day, I have no idea how it managed to mess up my MBR. I had to repair Windows soon after. As I recall, I was using Windows ME on the desktop at the time. Windows XP had yet to be released.

 

[wendy-lebaron]

this is a distribution i deeply wish was kept going. at least to debian "bookworm" base.

it had many quirks. for example the release 9.1 live kde desktop refused to show me the digital clock! this hasn't been equalled. with any other kde plasma i've had and tried.

i disliked the compositor and the lousy visual effects it had. no please i want snappy response. no visual surprises of any sort.

i made a bad decision one day. to do a full-system update. of course it failed at "update-initramfs" near the end of it. after downloading at least 1gib of packages.

it was a bit problematic putting wine 5.0.3 on it. but it was possible. i resolved to run only 32-bit windows stuff on there. the wine 8 appimage i have lying around should have worked too.

i liked it better than neptuneos, away from kde plasma. came with even more software. although a lot of it was worthless and maybe outdated.

it has a special place in my technological metal heart. such that i still have that 9.1 iso. but i won't use it again.

i hoped someone else mentioned it in this topic. the knoppix 9.1 utilizes "reiserfs" filesystem. which became deprecated in 2023 or maybe earlier. i don't know if the latest release still sticks with that. but that would have stopped me if i ever tried it last year or later.

---

I wouldn't put too much faith in what DistroWatch says.

It's perhaps understandable that a small, lightweight, "hobbyist" distro doesn't exactly get top priority in the message queue, but it took more than 20 emails, and nearly a year before the Distrowatch team could even be bothered to respond to our submitter....

Personally, I have a less than stellar impression of THEM.

you're right. jesse smith and his site have gone downhill like a crashing airship. like the photo of that awful accident in new jersey i keep seeing in the encyclopedia. since last year i think. he reviewed manjaro but behaved like he didn't have a lot of time. for something other than linux mint or mx linux. or the latest release of fedora or ubuntu. i don't prefer siegel writing instead. it actually made me look over dedoimedo's site. but that has different ongoing little-kid rambling. although he's mostly right. it's sad to see this year. he's going more toward macos and windows. beh.

there is no team. smith can't even proofread what he writes before posting it. the time he announced "the slow death of the power user". it had like three typos on it. i really wanted to stop reading at that point.

---

You could always try Gnoppix - forked from Knoppix in 2003, same sort of philosophy.

gnoppix?

oh just change the leading letter. to me those people are a bit shady.

 

[KGIII]

oh just change the leading letter. to me those people are a bit shady.

That sort of thing is fairly common in FOSS. They fork it and give it a similar name. I wouldn't hold it against them, at least not to any great measure.

If I were less lazy and a tad bit smarter, I'd fork Ubuntu to use the HURD stuff, and I'd call it GNUbuntu.

 

[wizardfromoz]

...to me those people are a bit shady.

Why?

 

[osprey]

Poor KNOPPIX was/is a really nice distro way back when. I remember using it as sort of a swiss army knife on various systems as a LiveCD. It was jam packed with so much stuff it was amazing.

It's sad to see it's not being developed anymore. (according to Distrowatch) I wonder whatever happened to it?

Did you ever use Knoppix?

Knoppix was exciting when it came out around the early 2000s. It was like carrying around a linux distro on a cd that could run on anyone's computer as long as the BIOS boot order was set for cd or one had access to the BIOS boot order to set it. One could show a linux distro to anyone who was interested, on their own computer if the setting were agreeable.

Later, it became easier to remaster the knoppix cd and personalise it and put boutique programs onto it that one could run for those whom it was useful. That was its main use for me, having written a large program that scored a time-consuming test. The remastered knoppix cd with the program included on it, was copied to blank cds and then distributed to those who were interested in using it. People in the trade I was in were able to use it on their own computers by setting their BIOS to boot the cd and run the program. It needed instructions, and they were provided.

After a few years, other live disks were issued with similar functionality but collectively with more regular releases than knoppix. It was probably around 2008 that the debian live project got off the ground, so after that with the development of the debian live manual here: https://live-team.pages.debian.net/live-manual/html/live-manual/index.en.html, it was easy to create a live disk that was far smaller and more efficient to achieve the same purpose of running a boutique program. It was that which superceded knoppix here.

In general I guess it was the developing profusion of live disks that can perhaps be seen to have swamped the knoppix project, or brought it back to the field of live disks from its initial preeminent position and popularity. I recently read that there were earlier live disks, but knoppix was the first that I became familiar with.

 

[kc1di]

Remember when knoppix was first released. It changed the whole linux world in that it was the first to use live boot. After that many of the better know Distros started using live sessions to give ops the opportunity to try out the system before installing. It was a big thing in it's day.

 

[KGIII]

it was the first to use live boot

Just for fun...

Nope! LOL (If you'll allow me to be pedantic...)

That's why I specified that it was the first one I had experience with.

Live CD - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The first was way back in time, not much after Linux was a thing. It was Yggdrasil Linux.

I only know this because I saw it was for sale at a computer store that I used to frequent. (Does anyone remember when there were stores that focused on computers?!?)

Well, this was more of an electronics store that had a focus on the PC market. They weren't far from campus and we'd play Dungeons & Dragons in their basement on weekends.

Yes, yes, I do like computer history.

If I hadn't gone to play D&D (and browse the latest computer magazines, or buy something I couldn't afford), I wouldn't have remembered this. So, D&D (I think it was technically 2nd ed. AD&D by that point) is good for something!

I dimly recall wanting to try it, but being unwilling to spend the money on it. That could just be a false memory, however. That was a whole lot of years ago!

Anyhow, thanks for entertaining my pedantry. Knoppix was much better known, and CD drives were still very expensive back then. Lots of PCs didn't ship with a CD drive at all.

 

[kc1di]

I didn't know about that one. only know about knoppix. Well I'll be

 

[wendy-lebaron]

have to go a bit off-topic.

ddg really sucks, just cannot give me the "exact" place. need to find a site that tells me where's the "exact" place. then they want to know what is clicked. very sick.

well we have to go back to distrowatch! i couldn't avoid it. (especially read the "conclusions" section.)

DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

News and feature lists of Linux and BSD distributions.

distrowatch.com

after this review. i noticed gnoppix put out another release. because it looked like they were having problems. offering it in europe. for some strong laws they have. that's the conclusion i drew from it. (shrugs)

the thing is pretty much being known. for trying to offer a dodgy a.i. model. not as much for security. and it's far and away from many other things. (during decade-2000) based on knoppix.