Knoppix linux remastered for the home ... ESSENTIAL

[law_student]

I am planning on creating a family-oriented remaster of Knoppix, optimized the average home and family PC.

This means keeping and emphasizing the easiest, flashiest and most useful home applications, such as KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla, and XMMS. At the same time, it means removing geek-only stuff like Apache and the various networking and programming tools.

This is an important and even essential project because right now, the biggest complaint against Knoppix for use as a home OS is that is too unwieldy. Having 15 different text editors doesn’t add any value to a home OS; it just makes things unnecessarily complicated. This isn’t a knock against Knoppix, which after all wasn’t designed to compete in the home OS market. However, having a “home Knoppix” project would be great for the Knoppix community, as it would be a great way to make Knoppix more mainstream and give it some exposure.

My question for forum members is therefore the following: Knoppix has over a thousand packages… which geek-only packages can we removed without breaking the distro? This isn’t as easy to answer as it sounds, since the majority of packages have pretty confusing descriptions (ex: arpwatch - Ethernet/FDDI station activity monitor.)

If someone gives me a list of packages that can be removed, I will remaster the ISO without these packages. I will make it available to everyone on my FTP site, so you can burn a copy for you’re your girlfriend and even your grandmother!

[biehl]

Hi,

I hope you get the project going - its such a good idea.

I am slowly removing crud from my knoppix install - i'll make some kind of diff between
>dpkg -l
at install and when I'm satisfied.

See ya
Anders

[edd]

I don't get it. KDE, OpenOffice. Mozilla, xmms, ... are already *in* Knoppix. So, sure, you
could remove stuff but you first to define what you really want to add -- i.e. what is your added
value here?

Dirk

[law_student]

The value of removing geek-only packages is free space. There are a million things you could do with an extra 100 or 200 MB on the CD, which could directly add to the home desktop experience.

Imagine hundreds of beautiful wallpapers, themes, icon sets, fonts, games, etc. Stuff people will be eager to explore and discover – much more so than a “fast lexical analyzer generator” (flex) or a “Server to use partimage across a network” (partimage-server).

The challenge is not finding what to add (everyone has their own ideas) but finding what can be safely removed (which only linux gurus know for sure).

[SolKarma]

I am planning on creating a family-oriented remaster of Knoppix, optimized the average home and family PC.

This means keeping and emphasizing the easiest, flashiest and most useful home applications, such as KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla, and XMMS. At the same time, it means removing geek-only stuff like Apache and the various networking and programming tools.


Don't be so sure home users don't want "geek-only" software. While I wouldn't include Apache (because its complicated, not complex), I'd consider including a solid web server like Xitami or a web application framework like Zope. Home users have need to serve web pages for various reasons, including SOHO businesses, web pages for pictures for grandma, etc.

The future (nearly here) will have http servers built into everything you can imagine. Chip based http servers are very inexpensive. If present tech trends continue HTML/XHTML will become 'the second language' for many people the world over, if it isn't already.

It would be a mistake to not include a programming language that has a high-level memory model, i.e., garbage collection, with native support for object-oriented programming. The language of choice here is Io, but Python comes a close second.

Why Io? Io uses prototype-based inheritance, which means everything really is an object. Class-based inheritance languages (e.g., Java, Python, C++, Smalltalk, etc) abound, but suffer from the class-instance dichotomy. Of these, Python is much simpler and cleaner than the rather lousy Java and C++. Of course, not including GCC, which provides C++ compiling support, would be a mistake.

Home enthusiasts who do not program most likely want digital still camera support, digital video camera support and serious mp3/ogg/mpg file swapping support.

So, if you're going to re-master Knoppix for the home, here's what you need:

1. Linux kernel
2. bash
3. XFree86
4. Mozilla
5. Xitami
6. Zope
7. XMMS
8. XChat
9. Jabber
10. [camera software here]

[Crell]

My school's LUG is looking into using Knoppix as our "advertising" distro, give or take some school branding, so I'm very interested in what you're doing here. Sounds great!

One thing I would add, you've got to include some games. Home users like games. :-) In particular, we've found that the "killer app" for GNU/Linux is, I kid thee not, TuxRacer. We've had people want to switch to Linux just for the joy of watching Tux go flying down an iceberg at 200 kph. Frozen Bubble should also be in there, as that class of game is also insanely popular.

I'm sure there are other games that should be kept. Can anyone think of any?

[Ghandalfar]

if you want to use tuxrace you will have to make sure that 3d acceleration works

since nvida has noticable marketshare you will have to modify knoppix to include nvidia's binary 3d drivers

[A. Jorge Garcia]

The flavor of gaming at my school that's really popular now is LAN Parties! Of these games, I kid you not, the most asked for is:

...drum roll, please

...BZFlag!

This game is home friendly too. If you're not on a LAN, you can play over the internet where many people have hosted bzflag servers out there with kid friendly filters (boots users with foul language, poor lag, shooting team mates, etc.). They have some really wild maps out there too.

EDIT: Watch out, I must be promoting MORPHIX again, but guess what, MORPHIXgame has BZFlag on it!

Enjoy,

[dave45]

One thing I would add, you've got to include some games. Home users like games.


My kids love Knoppix just for the games - they want more - how do I give them what they want?

[aay]

One thing I would add, you've got to include some games. Home users like games.


My kids love Knoppix just for the games - they want more - how do I give them what they want?

Try the Morphix gaming disk: www.morphix.org

[Henk Poley]

For another cool game to include, Liquidwar (http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/)

[Harry Kuhman]

Add games. It's surprising how many nice simple games have been removed that were in v3.1.

What to remove: I would suggest you don't need 2 competing ofice packages, open office and Koffice, I would go with just open office. Not a put down on koffice, but for the stated goal it is redundant.

As to geek like stuff to remove, I would suggest some care here. There are some relatively small geek like tools that you might consider removing, like ethtool, but I would go for less used large programs first and keep some of the handy geek tools in, even if they can only be found from a shell and are not in the menu. Particulary tools that help you in checking your own configuration. Other geek tools like nmap might be fair game, but use care when removing such things.

And please try to be as true to Knoppix as you can. Morphix is supposed to be exactly this, Knoppix repackaged for various types of programs, including a game vertsion. But they seem to have move so far away from Knoppix that I can get Morphix working correctly while Knoppix works fine.

[MattBuzbee]

One thing they could do is make different CDs tailored to the needs of different types of people and how they're going to use it. Another thing they could do is just put the source code or an installer for some stuff. That way you don't waste all the space but you still have it. How about having a second CD for Knoppix?
One thing they have to change in 3.3, and they're dumb for doing this, they have to put QT Designer in there. Kdevelop is just useless without QT Designer.
A good game to have is KTron. And of course, you can't live without Kbounce. And you need a tetris. I personally like GnomeTris but any would do.