some ideas for knoppix

[cloeser]

hi, i primarily use knoppix as a rescue system and for testing the system after a bios update etc.
i think it would be really nice to have KSensors (http://ksensors.sourceforge.net) and
aKpi (akpi.scmd.at) included in the distro to see whether the cpu temperature is okay,
how many rpm the fan does and so on. if you tweak cpu or bios on someone else's system,
it would be nice to have such packages on-cd, so you don't have to install anything on his/her hd.
of course the same info can be seen in the bios, but the bios doesn't give you the ability to test the system
under heavy load.
also, KSysGuard (in KDEBase) would be useful, so you have a comfortable overview and full
control over the proc-tree and the single processes.
Another nice feature would be to be able to generate a FreeDOS (http://freedos.org)
bootfloppy (the SuSE distro has a shell script for that: /usr/bin/dosformat).
For people interested in what kernel config their kernel is using it would be nice to
fix the "bug" in KControl --> System --> Kernel. since the /arch subdir does not exist if
booted from cd, no info is found. i'm not sure if /usr/src/arch/.../config.in is necesarry in any case,
but i know that on my computer at home (suse) , i can also load any other .config file,
which for knoppix would be /KNOPPIX/usr/src/linux-2.4.22/.config
i'm sure these things are also of interest for many other knoppix users.

...last but not least, i would _love_ to see the kopete im (http://kopete.kde.org) included in knoppix.
it handles AIM, ICQ, IRC, Jabber (http://www.jabber.org/press/2003-09-22.php),
MSN and Yahoo protocols and has a nice GUI - a good way to convince friends that
linux can replace windows :)
from KDE 3.2 on it will be included in KDENetwork, the latest release for 3.1 is 0.7.2

[aay]

I very much agree with the suggestion on kopete. Unlike other im client's it's easy to set up encryption in kopete with jabber.

[cloeser]

some more info:
current ksensors version: 0.7.2
- requires lm_sensors (current: 2.8.0) http://secure.netroedge.com/~lm78/
- recommended: hddtemp (0.3 beta 8) http://coredump.free.fr/linux/hddtemp.php
- uses database file: http://coredump.free.fr/linux/hddtemp.db
those altogether with akpi (current: 0.4) only take about 1MB of space.
furthermore, i think it would be useful to have kcontrol and kinfocenter accessible from
the main menu.
here is some more info on ksysguard: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/ksysguard.html
just out of curiosity, how likely is it to have these changes (see also first post) included in
the next release?
(just another idea that comes up: if there is not enough space on the cd, leave the gnome stuff
to the gnoppix distribution (http://www.gnoppix.org/) and stay with kde! ;-)