Knaked Knoppix

[Carrot]

I am looking to build my own "distro". I am a relative newbie to linux, but an experienced Win and DOS user. What I am looking for is a version of Knoppix that, when installed to the hard disk, has already been stripped down; hence the title of this thread.

Whilst I leave it open to suggestion I feel that this should be a very basic version of Knoppix. Just the core files.

The Kernel - Well DUH (although 2.6 based is good)
The hardware detection - might as well use debian pure otherwise
The re-masterng bits - people will use it to build from
Apt - speaks for itself
Text editor - Being "Naked" it will have no X server, thefore is entirely CLI until you choose which X to use.

There are a few good reasons as to why I feel this route should be looked into...

Wth v4.0 we are now on DVD. Bandwidth still costs money. Whilst people who wish to try a fully fledged system wil want all the bells and whistles and stuff that they will never ever use, the re-master-ers will want a small customiseable download, getting only the bits they want. This thereby A: saves time in the download stage and B: saves time starting to remaster as you have a blank canvas.

I can see this as being a very helpful tool, esp as my bro-in-law has broken his system 3 times trying to cut and splice knoppix to his requirements (size being one of them).

Please feel free to ammend this idea, critisism welcome.

[Harry Kuhman]

I am looking to build my own "distro". I am a relative newbie to linux, but an experienced Win and DOS user. What I am looking for is a version of Knoppix that, when installed to the hard disk, has already been stripped down; hence the title of this thread.

Great news. The "version" of Knoppix that you want, already stripped down and intended for install to hard disk is call Debian. They have managed to strip out all that Live-CD stuff that you don't want anyway and make a distro intended for installiing on a hard drive! You can make a bootable CD and install just what you want to your hard drive. And you have access to add from over fiveteen thousand packages that have been tested with Debian (and, of course, you can still get sources for other Linux software and try to compile them yourself, all of the tools are available).

[UnderScore]

See also http://wiki.debian.net/?DebianCustomCD

[Carrot]

The hardware detection - might as well use debian pure otherwise
The re-masterng bits - people will use it to build from

I AM using Debian. The point of this is to make Distro's from it.

The whole reason Knoppix changed the face of the LiveCD was its hardware detection.

that, when installed to the hard disk

Apologies if those few words confused, I momentarily forgot that you do not need to install knoppix to remaster it. My mistake

[Harry Kuhman]

The whole reason Knoppix changed the face of the LiveCD was its hardware detection.

I don't agree. I believe that the major thing that Knoppix brought to the table was being able to run Linux right from CD, without having to install anything, without users having to "make room" for Linux. It gave a lot of people a chance to get some hands on use of Linux before the messy step of installing to hard disk. One of the key pieces that let this happen was great code in Knoppix that could do a lot of hardware detection for the user, the user didn't have to give a Linux installer the type of mouse or what com port it was on, what IRQ some device used, the model number of some card installed years ago, and so on. This was indeed a big part of Knoppix, but certainly not the whole reason that Knoppix has made such an impact.

A few things have happened since then. The Debian installer has gotten a lot better. I recently installed from CD and only had to answer a few questions that I would consider technical. None caused me to stop the install, tear the computer apart and then start over. And my experience with Knoppix is that it is hard pressed to keep up with hardware and is actually fallng behind where it was in many areas as it tries (recent versions fail to recognize sound cards that older versions did; there are lots of reports that USB memory devices and CD writers no longer work for people, config files seem broken, and more). So while a Debian install is far from perfect (I still can't figure out how to get a simple Original Sound Blaster 16 working in my test system), Knoppix isn't either (it doesn't get the SB-16 going either). Getting all hardware right is still likely to take some effort (that effort is now often to figure out a complex set of "cheat codes" needed to boot), and likely less with a system intended for HD install than one that cut some corners because their primary target was a live CD.

Many people do still try to install Knoppix to a hard drive and live with it. They post about the many problems in the HD install forum. But I suggest that most of them have only looked at Knoppix and have not even tried to install a current release of Debian to see how the Debian install would go. Clearly if it gave them problems they could revert to Knoppix. But if they don't at least look at a Debian install they are not making an informed choice, they are just like ducklings following what they saw when they first hatched from the egg.

If one really wants to help address the issue of clean Debian hard drive installs and they have the skills to come up with "their own distro", I think it would be better to put those skills towards helping the Linux install world in one of a couple ways rather than building up yet another Live-CD distro and then encouraging people to install a live-CD distro to HD. It would be far better to come up with some tools that let new users configure a new install of Debian that to build yet another live distro and encourage a Live-CD distro install to hard drive. Two approaches to this that would be of interest to me are:

• 1) If you think that Knoppix does a great job of hardware detection, or know a better Debian based live distro, or can create one yourself, build a tool that will let a user boot a Knoppix like Live CD distro and then apply the automatically determined configuration to a basic Debian hard drive install. A user could do a simple Debian install and not worry about support for a sound card or even a mouse, take minimum monitor support and the like. Then they could boot from a Live-CD, run Linux there and make sure that all of the hardware detection was exactly as they needed. Once that was done the hardware configuration could be applied to the Debian system on hard disk, and when it was next booted it would be as well configured as the Live-CD. This would still allow and encourage users to download pure Debian, and to install their own selection of packages, not the all or nothing approach of a Live-CD. Of course, the configuration tool could go a step further too and give the user some easy ways to select wallpaper and other look and feel items of the desktop, but that's just wishfull thinking for version 2 of such an appliaction.
  
  2) An alternative that I've never seen much thought given to but would seem to be a reasonable approach to configuring Debain would be to recognize that most users who would like to install Debian already run Windows. Sure, the developers hate Windows, but it would still make a lot of sense to recognize that Windows already has a stranglehold on most systems. I would think that Debian (or any Linux distro) would be very well served by having a hardware "detection" tool that ran under Windows. Such a tool could gather all of the hardware information needed while running under Windows. It could give the users choices (in many cases more choices than they have under Windows). It could be 100% certain that it has all of the information needed for install before the install ever starts. It could even ask the new Linux user about what packages they want to install, how they want the disk space partitioned, if they want to keep Windows installed or start over fresh, network names and all the rest. Then it could write all of that information to a configuration file that could be on floppy, usb flash drive, CDRW, or, if the user is keeping Windows, to a file on the Windows partition. It could even be temporarly stored on another computer on the Internet, assuming that the Debian install is to be Internet based. There are even other ways that the data might be saved (there are certain "unused" sectors on a drive outside of the MBR and the partitions, for example), but the above should be enough to cover most cases. Once an accurate profile for the Debian install had been created, it should be extremely simple to install Linux to that system, with far better results than the current hardware detection and ask the user complex questions that they likely don't know the answers to approach that is used now.
  
  The user could just start the install, point the installer to the pre-created (and checked) configuration file, and walk away. Whey they come back the Linux that they specified would be waiting for them. If you think Knoppix has had an impact on the Linux world, imagine what such a configuration tool would have.

[chris-harry]

I don't agree. I believe that the major thing that Knoppix brought to the table was being able to run Linux right from CD, without having to install anything, without users having to "make room" for Linux. It gave a lot of people a chance to get some hands on use of Linux before the messy step of installing to hard disk.

i have to agree with harry here... knoppix is great, i give it to me friends so they dont get their hands too dirty... its great because no setup required... but, sometimes you have friends who get confused with the start up screen and start typing in commands to make it work?? (they never think of pressing enter)...

feather linux, is knoppix, almost naked... it still has a X....