May be a very useful idea
Yes, with the present DVD image size, in order to stick to the 4GB limit for cloop KNOPPIX, we have to remove programs to make room for substantial additions. (In my case, R, VMware Workstation and Oracle XE are the most important ones.) Instead of doing this, which is getting harder and harder to achieve while still keeping functionality intact, using the ability to chain cloop files can be very useful. I think that the main reason it has not been exploited more, is that it is kind of "third level" extension: First, the persistent store caters for most needs, second, creating a new primary cloop image suffices for most of the rest. I'm rather doubtful as to the usefulness of implementing version upgrades this way. Even within one release, it quickly becomes an hassle to keep it upgraded, and I guess this will be even worse across versions.
My current two cents worth:
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I use a 2 Gb Knoppix 6.7.1 LiveUSB as my mainstay OS.
I am not a programmer, but a frequent user.
My uses include internet browsing, e-mail and maintenance of some
personally useful spreadsheets with on-line information.
The CD size of Knoppix with its overlay process suits me very well,
with one exception: that is, when it comes to upgrading some its
larger elements like LibreOfffice or IceWeasel. Re-mastering is the
only really effective way I see to maintain a small end-product. However,
for my particular end uses, re-mastering requires too much additional
resource outlay, and frankly, getting it done exceeds
my short attention span.
I've tried several virtual system aproaches, and am not really
comfortable with any I've tried.
I expect I might be able to pull together an 'in situ' menu-item re-
mastering from available on-line material, but it would require most
of a 16 Gb usb. That would seem to be an absurdly wasteful
use of resources IMO.
Some other distros are going to minimalist base distributions as one
way of getting around my sort of problem. More frequent Knoppix upgrades
would also suffice, but KK has a day job and a family. I suppose he
might delegate some of his distro maintenance tasks if someone
competent were to propose something appropriate.
Remastering: Can it be made easy?
1. I think remastering can be made easy "enough", I will post an updated version of the remastering script used here as soon as I have tested and honed it a little more, and checked it for CD version use. I made a complete remastering of 6.7.1 DVD in about 70 minutes with it (running that cloop now), but slow file copying took a lot of the time.
2. Remastering may be the simplest way to contribute to Knoppix development, and creating and posting ISOs may be useful for that purpose. Wrt bandwidth use, posting scripts may, however, be vastly more effective ;-) But I would definitely download a pure 64-bits remastering of 6.7.1 instead of creating one myself. (My 64-bits version of Knoppix is 6.4.4-based and therefore "obsolete"..) Creating further cloops might also be a solution, a cloop with ca 2GB programs would be about CD image size.
3.
Quote:
I expect I might be able to pull together an 'in situ' menu-item re-
mastering from available on-line material, but it would require most
of a 16 Gb usb. That would seem to be an absurdly wasteful
use of resources IMO.
In principle of course yes - but a 16GB USB3 stick costs me about $40, so these resources can hardly be called very expensive. I also see no reason for using an USB stick for remastering if HD real estate is available, USB or otherwise. The space requirement is only for temporary use, and I use a 20 GB loopfile for full DVD remastering. With 64-bits systems and more RAM, ramdisks may also be used for this - I have 16 GB system RAM in the machine I'm posting from, more than enough for CD remastering to ramdisk.