Trying to 'build from scratch' as a newbie

Hello all. I am somewhat new to linux, and knoppix certainly is helping :)

I recently did a knx-hdinstall of knoppix 3.2 and its running alright, but there is a lot of junk to clean out (I don't need ISDN stuff for example). Tracking it down and avoiding problems is difficult. I was hopeing it might be possible to 'build up' to the components of knoppix that I want, from a vanilla debian install.

My problem is all the tweaks and configuration changes that have gone into the knoppix distribution. I can get a list of installed packages, but there are a lot of them. (dpkg -l gives over 1700). I could go through an install them all on debian, but my system would look almost nothing like the knoppix install I am looking at, simply because of the large amount of custom configuration that has been done.

Is there anywhere that the configuration changes are documented?

Or perhaps some way to compare the default configurations to the knoppix configurations? Is knoppix entirely debian package based?

Or are there apps that have been compiled/installed 'by hand' as it were?

I am trying to save some of the configuration, while ditching other parts. For example the console has a sane text size instead of the horibbly stretched text I get when installing debian default. I have no idea where this configuation option is. I'd like to keep the gui working the same as, as it seems to be running smoothy for me now.

I did consider starting from a smaller distro, but I'd like having a larger set of 'options' to choose from so I don't get stuck.

Is there such a 'config repository' ?
Assuming no, how would I go about recreating something knoppix like from scratch?

Might I suggest:
#apt-get update
#apt-get install synaptic
#synaptic

Using synaptic, you can easily see what is installed and remove what you don't want. You can find a list of customizations here:
http://developer.linuxtag.net/knoppix/

Cecil

synaptic is helping, but I wish it had a listing by section.. filters will have to do for now.

The repository link you sent me seems promosing, thanks. So that represents all the packages that are uniquie to knoppix that were added? Are all of the configuration changes in those packages as well?

All the packages I'm aware of... The source for the packages are also on the site.

You can also try aptitude.
#apt-get install aptitude
#aptitude

You can create filters in synaptic to have it only list what you want to see...

Ok, thanks, thats a great start. My question about the configs though, was if I were to take a stock debian system, and download and install all those packages, would I have the same thing as a knoppix install? I thought there was a fair bit of customization of the installed packages, especially the desktop. Perhaps I am wrong and the packages include those changes? Or if not, is there a way to discover what changes have been made from the stock package install?

Can you take a stock Debian and apply the packages? I guess you can , I don't know. The source for the packages exist, so you can can check it out to see what changes were made. Some of the packages were made from scratch.... I don't think any changes were made on the desktop.

Cecil

Alright, thanks a bunch! Looks like a matter of tracking down which packages make the changes I want :)