Updates

[jalb]

I don't know if it's posted or not but it would be great if we could enjoy a new Knoppix with the possibility to update/upgrade all the programs like a normal debian s.o. but with the simplicity of knoppix, I know many of us would be very greatful with that great feature. Thanks

[Harry Kuhman]

I think that the software that you're looking for, particularly if you install Linux to a hard disk or flash drive, is called Debian.

[dwstarke]

Call it a Debian-compliant Knoppix or a Knoppix-enhanced Debian, that is what some of us have been looking for. We're even willing to build it ourselves, but stripping Knoppix down until it is updatable with Debian has proved difficult. That's why we've requested a developer's Knoppix, the beautiful Knoppix bits in a minimalist system that we can add to in a Debian way.

[jalb]

I think that the software that you're looking for, particularly if you install Linux to a hard disk or flash drive, is called Debian. It would be a very hard work and I know what I am talking about :) Knoppix offers simplicity and it's very fast, with all the setup done. The only problem is to update many programs and the operative system itself (kernel, security, etc), I understand that it wouldn't be the same if we reject many servers but maybe many other programs. less used, could be removed. Something as a Debian stable already working with all the setup done (similar to knoppix) could be a great work. Otherwise we must use Ubuntu/Linux Mint.

[jalb]

Call it a Debian-compliant Knoppix or a Knoppix-enhanced Debian, that is what some of us have been looking for. We're even willing to build it ourselves, but stripping Knoppix down until it is updatable with Debian has proved difficult. That's why we've requested a developer's Knoppix, the beautiful Knoppix bits in a minimalist system that we can add to in a Debian way. That's what I am talking about :)

[utu]

I've been trying out a rolling-release, Debian-derived system, and this is a nice feature, I must say.

In Knoppix's defense, it might be noted that Klaus K rather regularly updates Knoppix annually.
KK's distro, if I may use that term, is more up-to-date in concepts and kernel number than many linuxes.

LiveUSBs are pretty inexpensive these days, you can have more than one linux if you want.

[utu]

KK's distro, if I may use that term, is more up-to-date in concepts and kernel number than many linuxes.
I forgot to mention that Klaus also updates, more often than annualy, a few choice apps in MainMenu>Install Components.
There are currently *five* such updates there that surprised me, including flash, which isn't that easy to come by.

[Harry Kuhman]

You have looked at Debian more recently than five or six years ago, right?

When I first got involved with Knoppix, Debian was indeed a lot of work to install. I consider myself pretty technical, and I took what I thought were good notes on the system that I was intending to install Debian on, yet I would still have to abort the install and go back and look at some some obscure piece of information to restart and complete the install. Knoppix impressed a lot of people because it "just worked", it showed that this stuff could be determined at install or boot time rather than making the installer go through a hardware engineer final exam. People asked Klaus for a way to install it and he did accommodate, but cautioned that because Knoppix was a mix of different Debian versions an "install" was not suitable for most users. People complained if Knoppix can "kist work" them why can other versions of Linux.

Debian and others learned from Knoppix and a Debian install is much cleaner now. I'm really not sure what you are complaining about. Sure, there are still some choices, like which version of Debian to use, and if you want a desktop or server environment, and which desktop to use and so on, but they are not tough choices, particularly if you have used a Live CD like Knoppix to aquatint yourself with Linux. You do have to install the packages that you want, but each is as simple as a single command line entry, and you don't end up with hundreds of applications that you will never use and you can choose from thousands more not included in Knoppix.

Personally I wouldn't suggest Debian Stable unless you were installing a mission critical server system. I've found Debian Testing to be as stable and have access to much newer tools. But that is just another choice one gets to make when installing Debian.

I guess one could easily write a script that would install the packages that Knoppix includes so that you could install everything in one burst. Walk away and come back to a very Knoppix like setup. But I wouldn't want to do that, it just adds too much bloat to the average system; bloat that is fine when filling space on a live DVD but pointless when setting up a hard disk system.

So you may very well know what you are talking about. I just don't know if the rest of us do and I certainly don't know what you think is so hard about installing Debian. And I say this as someone who has installed Debian to hard disk many times. I've never tried to install Knoppix to hard disk. I have tried to install it to flash, but never with satisfactory results.

[jalb]

I've been trying out a rolling-release, Debian-derived system, and this is a nice feature, I must say. In Knoppix's defense, it might be noted that Klaus K rather regularly updates Knoppix annually. KK's distro, if I may use that term, is more up-to-date in concepts and kernel number than many linuxes. LiveUSBs are pretty inexpensive these days, you can have more than one linux if you want. I love knoppix but if some vulnerability is found (and imagine about kernel and the difference in time between new versions of knoppix) and if you use knoppix in some moment to read your email or to visit a website with your login/password, who knows what could happen!. Internet is a very dangerous place to live without updates. In this case it's true that Knoppix is not made to do those things, maybe only to visit some information on internet, to play games, etc...

[jalb]

I used Debian many years ago during some time, I am from those times with debian/freebsd/openbsd/qnx/oracle/... and if I want to install some operative system in my computer I prefer Openbsd. But with livecds in my usb pen drive to use in many different computers and in my job with my VPN and Tor, I don't want to install everything from 0, I only want to use it as antivirus to analyze some computers (I downloaded Bitdefender free for 1 year to Unix), as an easy way to read my emails and browse when I have some time, etc...; but as i read in your answer maybe Debian has changed a lot (I remember when I was working many hours/days to setup this o.s. some years ago).
You have looked at Debian more recently than five or six years ago, right? ...



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Full quote deleted.

[jalb]

http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/01/27/9
(http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/01/27/9)A good and recent example is "Ghost" vulnerability.

[philo]

Knoppix is designed to be different, not to ressemble any of the latest and greatest Debian-based kids out there. Let it be so.

[dwstarke]

This is about the time when someone trots out that "Knoppix isn't meant to be run as a stable USB or hard drive based OS." But it could be! What I would like is the great tech advantages of Knoppix: ability to make the OS R/O, great hardware detection, small compressed system, persistence with ways to make that persistence permanent. It is elegant and beautiful in these respects.

I love Knoppix, but the lack of update and upgrade-ability drives me crazy. I will repeat what I've said many times. I realize that Klaus doesn't owe me a developer Knoppix. I'm only asking that he or someone who has conquered the minimalist remaster make it available. Please.

[utu]

.

I'm only asking that ... someone who has conquered the minimalist remaster make it available.
While we're waiting for our annual update, you might look at MX-14.3 which is a rolling-release Debian and has menu-driven re-mastering.
Then you might consider time-share working with that *and* Knoppix.

See my notes & Werner's on this forum, below at: http://knoppix.net/forum/threads/31279-Anti-x-14-3-LiveUSB-features

[Jeffery Mewtamer]

I can't speak for Live USB, but using Aptitude to upgrade packages on a harddrive install of Knoppix works just fine, though I must say the Knoppix installer leaves a lot to be desired(no way of setting a root password, no easy way of setting up a separate home partition or doing a clean install while leaving an existing home partition in tact, any heavy modification of the Live system causing the install to fail) compared to Debian's installer. Then again, I was using Debian as my primary OS prior to Vision loss forcing me to look for alternatives, and thus far, Adriane is the only Assistive Technology solution I've found that doesn't require help from a sighted person to set-up. If Adriane got ported upstream and an Adriane variant of Debian Testing CD1 was made available, I'd switch back to Debian in a heartbeat. Sadly, even though I only use part of the Adriane suite(only 12 of the packages I have installed aren't sourced from Debian Testing/Main), there's one package in the dependancy tree of Adriane that isn't available from the Knoppix repository, which would prevent any attempts at installing Adriane on vanilla Debian.