Why Knoppix 3.4 is delayed again ...

I'm relatively new to Linux, and love the ease of showing providing a friend with a Knoppix CD. But I'm glad you guys have this problem -- because the one complaint I hear the most is there's too many programs scattered around, many of which do the same thing.

If a goal of Knoppix is to convert the masses of Windows users, I'd really simplify the next release. Just use one best of breed (hard to agree on, I know) application for each category. Cut back on the games to 4-5. Rethink the menus to make things more intuitive to newbies. Keep it clean, simple, and uncluttered.

If it were me, I'd keep it at KDE 3.2.1/Kernel 2.6 only, and put a GUI on the boot process for absolute newbie friendliness. (you can leave a command line option for the hard core).

I'm looking forward to whatever you come up with, and certainly appreciate all the hard work! Hope my suggestions are helpful.

Fabian

I've been usin Knoppix for the last 10 months and it's been a joy. Personally I could live with KDE 3.2 and fluxbox as window managers. The rest I really don't use. Mozilla is a good package as far as web browsing/email/html editor and composer, but as far as browsing is concerned, I love Firefox. KOffice vs. OO. Hmmmm. It's a coin toss really, but either one of them will do. Most people use Knoppix as a rescue CD so I might be more inclined to the one office package that is more compatible and easier to exchange with Windows. I don't care much about games and development tools, but if you're gonna ditch Mozilla as a browser, make sure to have an html editor. Keep both kernels because 2.6 doesn't get along well with some machines, as well as it still has problem recognizing some hardware. Keep all partition tools and both knoppix-installer and knx-hdinstall options. I've lost count of how many times the knx-hdinstall script has done the job instead of hte knoppix-installer script.

Anyway it'd be nice to have a utility like klik or some install scripts for an antivirus and firewall utilities. I'd suggest guarddog for a firewall and f-prot for an antivirus.

Thanks Fabian and Klaus for your hard work.

I'd vote for removing Acrobat Reader. Konqueror 3.2 displays PDF files a lot better then the aging AR 4.0 does. And Konqueror is the default file manager of KDE, not only a browser, so it probably will stay.

As to Koffice, I don't mind losing it, but the 1.3 version is pretty good and, because it is tightly integrated with KDE, it is relatively small. It is therefore more space-efficient to include it in a live CD.

I would like to keep TeX. Although it is irrelavant to many people, it is a treasure for many others. One of the major factors of Knoppix's success is its wide selection of applications, and Klaus and team have good sense regarding what should be included. But it comes to the time that we have to removed some of the apps simply because the software included are getting bigger while getting better. I'd like to see an online poll to rank apps in each category so as to help the Knoppix team to decide which one can be left out of the live CD.

Since this is my first post in this forum I would like to thank Klaus and all involved with high respect for their excellent work!

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Originally Posted by Bobmeister

I agree about Koffice, it can go away...just about EVERYONE is using OpenOffice now as the best suite for that stuff.

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I don't want to start a flame war, but a office program that takes several minutes to boot (actually far longer than the OS itself) is imho totally unacceptable, no matter how good it is. Especially since we are running from CD, OOo is not usable.

Instead, I would remove every application that provides functionality which is also natively provided by KDE 3.2.1, that would include Mozilla (use Konqueror and KMail), xchat and gaim (use Kopete), etc (you get an idea). The KDE apps have made considerable improvements over the past time.

Please keep in mind that the important thing about Knoppix is that you can run many *different* kinds of applications from a live CD, we really do not need redundancy that much (I know, choice is good, but there is the choice to hd-install, klik-install or use knoppix remasters focusing on different aspects).


DVD is not yet a real option because there are way too many PCs without DVD drives (e. g. notebooks).

It's time to debianize Knoppix and have a website where one can select which packages to include in a custom-made ISO... ;)

Wow! So many different opinions. I personally use a variety of the programs except for the games. However, if it was not for the frozen bubbles, I know a few people who would not boot this CD. I have now convinced probably 30+ people here in Florida to use Knoppix for surfing the Internet. It is the safest way!

It would be easier to list what I use then what I don't because there is so much on the CD. I think someone should create a poll listing the contents of the CD so we could mark what we use. What ever has the least we drop it! This would be more accurate than reading these posts.

First, Thanks Klaus, Fabian, Eadz, everybody. I copied the Knoppix CD to a HD partition last June and haven't looked back. No more Win98 for me. With my /home on another partition upgrading means simply replacing the CD files. I moved from 56k to DSL just to get the newer Knoppix releases.

So here's my thoughts:
KOffice goes, tho consider keeping KWord.
gnumeric goes.
Bochs goes.
LaTex/Lyx goes.
BASH is the only shell needed.
Most games go, tho keep KMahjongg (please!), Frozen Bubble, and a few card games.
2.6 is the only kernel I want. (2-16-04 otherwise.)
I have to have Konqueror and KMail.
Please keep the awesome KStars.
Consider adding: support for digital cameras and Quanta+.

Thanks again everyone.

Some people don’t have a dvd burner or rom. I understand. A cd distribution would be perfect for those people. However, in addition to the cd version, I would like to see a big bloated 4.5 gig dvd UberKnoppix. I want to learn KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, Blackbox, windowmaker, and any others that will fit.
I would like to try Open Office, K Office, Abiword, and even Ted
Browsers? All of them. Games? There are not nearly enough on the cd. Open GL Xscreensavers you bet. Kmail, Evolution and 12 other email programs. Tools for installing, Tools for remastering. Well you get the Idea. I got my hands on a dvd version of cebit. It was nice. A little buggy but nice. Would it work if it were 4.5 gig I don’t know. But if it did it would be a useful and fun disk!
Whatever you decide I'm sure it will be great

I noticed in the "unofficial" versions of knoppix 3.4 there is a live-cd apt-get type installation program that might solve all the space problems.

Please consider this:
Throw out EVERYTHING EXCEPT
- the 2.6 kernal with X support
- KDE 3.2 (including konqueror browser)
- dev tools and libs (including gcc compiler) to allow live installations
- drivers (including nvidia & ati graphics drivers)

Now people can download any utilities, office software, games, etc. they want and install them with the live-cd into the ramdisk.
Let the resulting download statistics tell you what the majority of people want.

Moustache

My quick take on this:
a. Absolutely keep the CD-ROM as the main version, and only make DVDs for extra, kitchen sink functionality (games, apps, what-have-you). I've probably run Knoppix on something like 40 machines or so by now, and I think only one or two of them had a DVD *reader* in it. I certainly don't have a DVD burner, and I've probably given away a good 25 Knoppix CDs by now (some less used/appreciated than others - like for some programming students to test out C programming with Kate & gcc).

b. I have never used KOffice - I'm not entirely enamored with OO.o, but it probably has the most complete compatibility out there (which is really important for new users). I'm not knocking KOffice here, but I just never took to it - I have an enormous respect for KDE development, and really think their development model is great (very open). Personally, I use AbiWord & Gnumeric, and love how fast and streamlined they are - I have a slower laptop, and OO.o is a slug on it. As such, I'd ask that these two apps stay in, but would completely understand if they also took the cut for OO.o's sake.

c. Please keep WindowMaker :). Fast and clean, this is my window manager of choice, and it works quite well on some older machines that just choke on KDE.

d. I'm all in favor of Mozilla Firefox in lieu of Mozilla [Application Suite]. The former will be taking the latter's place in the future (some time frame possibly less than 12 months). I think we all know that it's faster, has a much cleaner interface, and just works well. Heck, I'm posting this from Firefox :).

Big CD ?? NO, they have problems on some of my friends old computer, not to mention the compatability problems with some burners... and aquiring. As much as I hate to say it Koffice should go OOo works fine, and windows can use it. If you can convince the masses to slowly adopt the OSS ideaology, then the will fully embrace it. (first step to getting most of my friends to switch from MS to Linux is to show them the power (and problems) with open source software, and OOo on Win is the furthest I can push at some times. [if you don't belive that OOo has some issues, try to go through and set a document to center on a page, it is to stupid of a problem, when in MS office you can just chose to center on the page in the page settings]

Leave Moz', lose the 'Fox, when people need the features of Moz, fox won't cut it all the time, when I have issues with an HTML page, and I can't get the browser to work right, I need the HTML pages to be viewed in a composer interface to see the bad code. Leave Konquer also, it is one of the best ways to go through and browse files, plus it does everything else.

Lose some of the double and triple functionality for file editing, you don't need Abiword, I haven't met anyone who uses it anymore, and why do you need emacs, vi, etc. choose one or two of the most popular, let people learn.

As far as Nvidia 3D drivers go, I would say to place that on as a script or a document to follow, but not activily on the disk, what are you going to use 3d for on a bootable disk, you won't really use it until there are some games that can use it, which would probably come from a remaster, and they can include it. But this should be the first option to put on in the next version that doesn't have the 2.4 kernel, which should be kept for a few releases only to ensure that there are no issues with the current programs, i.e. I heard that cloop had some bugs that needed to be looked into to get working properly, but i don't know for sure.

As far as a DVD idea, I would say that Klaus should make it into the 4.0 tree, and "kill" the CD version in 3.x, he can actively persue the focus that he wants with out having to worry about the space issues in the short term.

I agree with probono. OO is impossible to use unless you hdinstall on a PIV! So, if you're going to drop an office suite, kill off the bigger one, KOffice or OO. I'm not sure, but I imagine its OO.

Further, I agree with keeping the CDROM format. CD drives are much more readily available for demoing Linux to noobies.

Also, games are a big hook to get noobies into Linux. So keep some games. In fact, get rid of some in preference for more LAN party style games (bzflag, freecraft, etc).

If you can make room, add nvidia drivers! Its a big hassle to run scripts everytime I do a hdinstall to get my nvidia cards working right....

Oh, and keep teTex and QLyx which are very useful!

EDIT: Oh, keep Mozilla, I love Composer!
Also, why keep 2 kernels??? Support 2.6 in KNOPPIX 3.4 and maintain KNOPPIX 3.3 with kernel 2.4 for a short transition period!

Well, that's my 2 cents.

Regards,
AJG

Probably I'm biaised but I think in addition to KDE (even if I don't like it much it's useful for having access to many configuration options), some window managers like icewm could be removed. FluxBox is nice, so it should be kept, and WindowMaker is very good, clean and fast even on my old computer.

I tried AbiWord, Koffice, KWord etc..., and even if OpenOffice takes time to start, it's MUCH faster to edit long texts with it than with the others (on an AMD K6 350 mhz, 200 mhz ram). I edited a text of around 120 pages with Abiword (rtf file), and tried to work with it, the scrolling between pages was far too slow. KWord crashed when I wanted to save my rtf file, and was much slow too. OpenOffice is more reliable than the others. As I said, it's long to start, but long texts can be edited efficiently and fast once it's in memory.

3 acrobat readers are too much. Ghostview is enough since it can read postscript too.

dosemu could be included

most games should be removed, even if knoppix could include at least a few (small) games for demonstration only.

Kstar is interesting, and also useful for educational purposes (to demonstrate to other ppl an original and nice software)

joe, zile and old useless editors are not needed. Of course you can't consider a unix system without Vi. About emacs, I personally don't use it, but it's propably usefull to some pple. In console, vim is the choice, in X-window, nedit is good.

About TeX, Lyx and such, probably ppl interested in this prefer to have in on hard drive and not on a "live-cd" ? It's so huge and requires so many library (for ex. if you want to write french or german texts you needs the dedicated libraries...), so it could be removed

FireFox and ThunderBird could replace Mozilla.

Nvidia drivers could be included it seems to be a common video card.

To sum up, I think Knoppix should be usable both on old and new computers (don't make it boot in 1200x... resolutions, and on DVD only... we still want to use our cdrom players), and oriented for an "office" usage (writing texts, using spreadsheets, going on internet, using emails, listening to / recording music, viewing / editing vector, 3d and bitmap graphics, maybe programming too...).
Some scientific tools should be included as well.

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Forgive my asking - why not consider the high density CDs (800MB)? If the ISO is 765 or even 785 MB, it would still fit in one of these...

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many old cdrom players can't run high density CDs.

About the space problem, why not include a modular compressed file with around 60 / 120 (or more ) extra megabytes for putting on an usb key ? For example there could be a 3d pack, with extra 3d applications, a game pack, a music pack (with trackers, soundrecorders, sequencers), etc.
I don't know if it's technically possible, and i don't have any usb key, but it could solve some of this space problem, and give some modularity to ppl who would like this ? Also while keeping a regular "knoppix" core for most users, those extra packs could be developped separately by fans of thoses special topics.

Just wanted to make a small point about an addition here - nano. I haven't tried any of the releases in the last month or two, so I'm unaware if it's been included or not.
I use joe instead, and it gets quite annoying when it makes lines flow to the next one, and then you have all those pesky backup files it creates as well. Nano's much more intuitive - it's great for simple admin tasks as it's quick and hassle-free.

I vote for removing Koffiice and Mozilla. Mozilla is easily loaded and is pretty time sensitive. As long as Konquerer is present, tailoring the system is easy. Kpackage may also be superflous. I use synaptic as it presents a good picture.
Alternatively consider the Mepis route of a second disk of stuff, possibly KDE. once XFree is working most stuff is easily added although KDE is a big one for 56k. (I live in the country.)
pete

To me, Knoppix should stay a CD based distribution. That is the only way to keep the huge userbase.

Removing applications could be done, but somehow i think you would alienate some users, whatever you choose.

The only way is to drop the 2.4 kernel. People who NEED the 2.4 kernel can use version 3.3 (or the Ct version). But to keep old kernels while Linux moves on is not good. 2.6 is a huge improvement.

I don't know if the kernel takes 65MB though. If that's not enough, drop some of the things that are double (office, editors, Acrobat Reader). If people already using Knoppix need that, they will get it. People new to Knoppix will get used to this new standard.

Please PLEASE do not drop the games. It is very useful to show the diversity of apps in Linux, and the quality in that.

As a real newbie here are my thoughts

drop koffice, keep it as a CD distro, only have the 2.6 kernel and drop the lesser used duplications, you are not going to satisfy every one, but this thread will probably give the team a good idea of what is considered unnecessary.

:D :wink:

Is there anyway to setup a minimal version of knoppix to remaster
on the fly? The steps would be

1. Boot into minimal knoppix.
2. Mount temporary disk space
3. Present the user a list of possible packages available over the net.
Let him select until reaching 700MB.
4. Remaster Knoppix.
5. Burn the CD.
6. Reboot but tell the user to remove the original CD.

Then everyone could have just the packages they want or don't want.

Alex

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Originally Posted by moustache

Now people can download any utilities, office software, games, etc. they want and install them with the live-cd into the ramdisk.
Let the resulting download statistics tell you what the majority of people want.

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That seems a good solution, BUT I know a LOT of people who use knoppix on systems that don't have Internet access (or that use dial-up, and can't download big programs), and can't do a HD install...

The TeX issue... I use it, but I mostly use a remastered version of knoppix (Quantian) which includes a more complete TeX system. I won't miss it in knoppix. And, the faster the new knoppix is ready, the faster the remastered versions will update ;)

REMOVE:
kde-i18n-* (keep the relevant english/german ones)
All games, except Mahjong & frozen-bubble
koffice
gnumeric

If anybody would like Knoppix in their language, set up different versions similar to the german & english version. The i18n files take a lot of space, and whe can skip italian, spanish and so on.

Oh! Add icons to the menus for applications on disc, like nedit, xeyes and so on.

There's one thing I'd like to see on Knoppix that has nothing to do with space constraints or applications, and that's the ability to load the configuration archive and the persistent home directory from the same volume (although that might not be technically feasible).

<edit>
Here's a radical idea -- many of you are familiar with the Captive project, which allows one to safely mount NTFS volumes read/write. How about if a "cheatcode" was offered to download and install the necessary drivers (using Captive) right after network detection? And then allowed you to restore configuration files or a home dir from the NTFS volume?
</edit>

Although it would be nice to have some applications included that are really difficult for us "perpetual newbies" to install from source on a distro like Red Hat or Mandrake -- I'm thinking the Rosegarden sequencer/score editor for one; and MPlayer, for another. (Rosegarden is on the ISO-Top remaster, even though it's not in the K menu.)

I agree with wooac that a Knoppix distro that made it extremely easy (even easier than Morphix) to remaster would be very cool, but I don't expect that Mr. Knopper will produce that one. Someone else might!

I don't agree to discount any of KDE apps and especially Konqi & KOffice. There are a lot of other un-necessary apps that can be removed. I am NOT against GNOME but there are quite a few GNOME apps that can be removed. Is it necessary to keep multiple un-popular WM?

Remove all windows managers excpets KDE, and all languages except English, and a few western european languages. If someone from another language needs knoppix in their language, they can get a remaster with their language.

The problem with 60 mb to much is a big problem :( 60 MB to much in normal way (760mb iso) or ~ 20 MB to much??? (cloop calculated)

More and more applications leaving the big Knoppix - I know this because I created Kix but after Knoppix 3.3 remastering to such a little size without removing big things isn't possible anymore!

We see from time to time applications grow and Knoppix is getting more and more to a base for other remasters that have special targets...

Any chance of throwing NTPassword back in there?

Aside from that, I say it probably doesn't need both 2.4 AND 2.6... 2.6 is fine.

Like everyone else has been saying, pick one or two of each of the most popular programs (most dependable and the fastest, most streamlined) for any given app type and leave it at that.

Keep K3b, it's awesome... same with OO (that's something I hear every time someone else is trying to convert someone to Linux... "Open Office is awesome, and free..").

Also, please keep all the Linux Newbie help type stuff. God only knows how often I've used that crap.

I must say, that 'switch to DVD format' idea was horrible. That's even less appealing that having to wait 4+ hours (if you're lucky) to download your linux, like some other retarded distros. I really don't understand the mindset of people who came up with that...

"Well hey, how about we DON'T give them any kind of dependable medium? And let's just HOPE they're not the kinda person who likes to experiment with their machine... else they might end up spending something like 25 hours a week downloading our linux, ahyuck!"

One word processor is plenty . Mozilla offers a good replacement to IE . Multiple language support is important .. Ease of operation ! ..Only this year I have seen new systems with linux in a brick and mortar store . Computer shows, I see Knoppix on systems for the show hours .
DVD is up and coming . If Knoppix is distributed on a DVD It will simply be ahead of it’s time . there will be plenty of CD’s floating around to be copied .When all computers have DVD Knoppix will have a larger market share .
From popular parts supply site -BenQ 16X DVD-ROM, 48X CD-ROM 31.00.- DVD it’s time is here !

I agree completely with probono from a few posts back. Especially his point about OOo. I think it is a great app but in many cases it's much too slow to run off of a Knoppix CD. When Knoppix is running on the average low end PC with limited memory and processing power OOo tends to make Linux look bad.

In related news. We all know that Knoppix is Debian based. So maybe an idea might be to approach the maintainers of certain, shall we say, bloated applications and request that they offer a skinney version of their app for inclusion on Knoppix. I think that Knoppix has hit critical mass to the point where app maintainers do condider it an honnor to be included in a Knoppix release and thus would be willing to create a space saving Knoppix specific version of their app.

Just my 2 centavos :)

Perhaps for a few core things you could build the Debian package with --disable-nls: for instance, Perl probably doesn't need that much NLS support (it has Unicode stuff built in), so why have it?

goin' to be a difficult choice ;-)

when reading the comments, alot ppl favor removing Koffice and Mozilla, and only having the 2.6.x kernel. guess thats ok, although I prefer Koffice for its speed - but you can always install it after the hdinstall.

and about the games - DONT remove frozen-bubble, its awesome! the others might be removed, I guess...

Yes, it has disturbed me about the number of people keen to remove Koffice in favour of OO.

I find the Koffice modules faster and more versatile than their OO equivelants.

Not sure where anyone else stands on this

Just a thought, but I would like to keep Koffice... I set my little brother up with my old laptop (800mhz PIII with broken hard drive) so he can do his work. OpenOffice takes 10 minutes to load, KWord about 30 seconds. Also, Gnumetric seems to be the only spreadsheet program that will actually make graphs and save them to proper formats (to be printed on my parent's Windows XP machine).
I seem to recall someone saying that both the German and English Knoppix versions have German and English OpenOffices. Why not take the English version of OpenOffice out of the German Knoppix CD and the German version out of the English CD?
Also: cut BB (in the 'Toys' menu), and TextXaoS (in "Graphics"). They're cool, but... If you absolutely have to have a Linux demo, there's always "Yellow Rose of Texas" by Fit & Bandwagon, Assembly 2003, and it's only 4 kilobytes, and uses SDL. Search Pouet.net. That would shave a few mb...

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I find the Koffice modules faster and more versatile than their OO equivelants

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probably for a small note...
Otherwise Ooo is more faster and stable than Koffice, especially if you don't run any kde application at all at the same time (Ooo + fluxbox for ex.)
On a slow computer, I'd be curious to compare the loading time of Kde + koffice on the one hand, and FluxBox + OpenOffice on the other hand...

And keep in mind if you want to use knoppix also as a "rescue" disk, it's important the office suite on it can handle the .doc files well. So far only Ooo can do this.
Kde is nice and easier to configure, but its applications tend to crash more :(
I used it more before, but for now I feel I need something less bloated (even by using Ooo ;) )

it seems it's a bit a pity to remove koffice, but it'd be much worse to remove OpenOffice. If possible, removing TeX / LaTeX things in prority would be less damaging for Knoppix.

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I set my little brother up with my old laptop (800mhz PIII with broken hard drive) so he can do his work. OpenOffice takes 10 minutes to load, KWord about 30 seconds

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the hard drive must be much broken because on my 350mhz AMD OpenOffice takes 45 s to load, while KWord takes 9 seconds.
But I'm using WindowMaker that takes 20 seconds to load, while KDE takes 45 s....

and also, once OpenOffice is loaded, if you close it it will take only 5 seconds to load again...

:shock: I think that the CD format should be maintained.
If like other have mentioned I would remove the Koffice modules, Use a smaller Mozilla like Firefox and remove the less utilized programs from the CD format...Ahh Yes like mentioned before KStars is a must...Maybe this will help, I guess it would be to look a the biggest programs consuming space and if there use by user would be mininum or none these would be candidates to be excluded but that the user could install thru the use of APT-GET...

This is my humble opinion, I don't know if it is possible but the CD format still should be a Kept...

Thanks again for helping such a great Distro or Debian Based Linux System. May God Bless you both Fabianx and Klaus

If Tex is removed, I'll have to switch over to Quantian. Quantian is cool with a lot of numerical analysis and scientific computing apps and its built on top of clusterKNOPPIX. Just pop a Quantian CD in multiple PCs and presto, you have a Linux SuperCluster based on openMOSIX plus diagnostic utilities!

One thing Quantian doesn't seem to have, however, is a version of jdk for making java apps and applets. Neither does it have a version of jre for running applets in Konqueror.... These are in KNOPPIX and instrumental to my students.

I guess I'm a bit confused. I thought that Blackdown made a GNU version of jre and GCC made a GNU version of jdk. I guess not, as Quantian has GCC....

BTW, I've been using Linux for nearly 10 years now and KNOPPIX for the last 2 years to expose many students to the joys of no WIMPdoze environments!

Regards,
AJG

One of the key features of Knoppix is that everything is on the CD. For this reason I don't think including a minimal installation and making the user download/install what they want is a good idea. It's a great idea for a "make-your-own" version, but I'd like to have a disc to pop in where everyhting is just there already.

My vote is to reduce all of the redundancy except add Firefox because IMO it's a lot better than Konqueror. KDE does well enough for other things (office, IM, etc).

Also, while I have a DVD burner, I don't think it's time to move away from CDs yet. I've got a pile of free-after-rebate CDRs that I can burn for every new version of Knoppix and toss in the trash the second their obsolete, but I can't say the same for DVDRs. Plus if it's gonna use a DVDR, it should use almost the whole thing, not just a gig or two.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sligh

Computer shows, I see Knoppix on systems for the show hours .
DVD is up and coming . If Knoppix is distributed on a DVD It will simply be ahead of it’s time . there will be plenty of CD’s floating around to be copied .When all computers have DVD Knoppix will have a larger market share .
From popular parts supply site -BenQ 16X DVD-ROM, 48X CD-ROM 31.00.- DVD it’s time is here !

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I know a lot of people have more disposable income, and have DVD drives in their own computers, and they've come down in price, but please understand that your machines are *not* the majority. I help manage a network of ~700 computers, and in that network, and I don't think there are 5 computers in that mix with DVD drives. We've deliberately ordered them without DVD drives - we have absolutely no use for them. There is absolutely no need for DVD drives in our environment - our computers are for office-style work, teaching, related software dev., and general Internet usage. DVD drives encourage playing - namely of movies - and DVD-ROM has shown no convincing uses (Knoppix might be the only one I could see) - software companies realize how small the installed base is, and would never release their software on a medium that only a fraction of their target audience could use. The possible exception to this rule is games, as gamers are expected to have leading technology in their computers. Thinking of my network - I can use the current version of Knoppix in every single computer there, and it works quite well. Moving the development to a DVD format, and letting the CD-ROM format fester would be *very bad* for the spread of Knoppix, and would not help a push for the use of Linux.

P.S. Do I know people with DVD-ROM drives? Sure - I was one of the first people to buy one - for my PII/266, and still have it (but the rest of the computer couldn't possibly support such a version of Knoppix). The ThinkPad I'm composing this one also has a DVD-ROM drive, but probably is too weak to support so much extracting & swapping. My girlfriend's computer is probably the most capable personal computer I know of with a DVD-ROM drive, and before I got her set up with a Knoppix load, I did use the very cool (and very small) Geexbox distro to play DVDs on it. However, I do see these as exceptions to the rule - there are still loads of computers without DVD drives - in fact, when I configured a new Dell for my mother, I got it without DVD or CD-RW (I felt it was unnecessary, and would lead to more software/driver corruption under Windows - this is my mother we're talking about...we'll wait a bit on Linux for her =P).

[/rant]

Ok, No on the DVD idea. I run Knoppix on alot of older systems that don't have DVD drives.

I'd say drop Open Office for the same reason, cause it takes up alot of space, hogs abunch of resources when running, and takes forever to load (it runs like crap from a live cd, or any older machine that doesnt surpass the minimum requirements). Personally I removed it (well, most of it, I can't seem to get it out of the Kmenu), and use Abiword for my big fancy word work, and use Kedit for my text files (and what little spreadsheet, etc is done with Koffice).

Also, scrap Seamonkey for Firefox. I did that, and most people are.

Can't remove Konqueror, because its the file manager for KDE (plus my guestimates are that its a pain to remove, because its integrated so much into KDE).

I'd also suggest removing some of the software that requires special hardware, like the TV tuner or Radio tuner. A majority of all computers dont have either of those.

alot ppl want to remove Koffice, for example because it crashes, or doesnt load word files. well, they haven't seen KDE 3.2.x!!! Koffice is now stable, and DOES read ms Word files. no problem. and even integrated into konqueror, which is now almost as good a webbrowser as mozilla/firefox, while even faster, and way better integrated.

I'd drop OO and firefox, cuz its only useless duplication of applications. the native KDE apps offer almost the same features at less space (koffice is *waaay* smaller than OO, Konqi can't even be removed), with more integration and better speed.

name me one thing Koffice can't do that you reguarly use in OO... I'm very sure there isn't much. Of course OO has more features than Koffice, but not much features we use daily, I'm sure. same to Mozilla (firefox even has LESS features than Konqueror, you have to download and install a few plugins to make it work nice)

I'd vote in favor of removal of Kword as well. OpenOffice, while being larger than Kword, simply handles more file types than Kword. Also, I've had more problems with Kword crashing while trying to save new work, than OpenOffice, and more problems with Kword trying to print to pdf than OpenOffice. OpenOffice is simply more stable than Kword right now. While Kword will be great as it gets more stable, it isn't really stable yet. And I'll probably prefer it over OpenOffice as it does become more stable, and as it gets better at supporting more file formats. In the meantime, Knoppix must solve a space problem, and one of the two should go. Also, Knoppix is helping to bring Windows users to Linux, and OpenOffice runs on both Windows and Linux, so it can help by getting people onto Windows/OpenOffice, and then Linux/OpenOffice while keeping at least the office suite familiar.

I was going to vote for removal of Mozilla also, like others have done, until I realized that it would also mean the removal of Mozilla's Composer. This would be a bad idea. I, and others, find Composer useful, as one of the few wysiwyg type of web page builders out there. This is also something missing for would-be converts to Linux from Windows. Knoppix doesn't have Quanta Plus which is part of KDE, so the removal of Mozilla would cause two or three different major functionalities to be removed, Mozilla browser, Mozilla composer, and Mozilla mail. While I use and very much like Kmail, Kmail doesn't appear to have support for IMAP. Mozilla Mail does. So as much as I'd like to remove Mozilla due to its very large size, it would be a mistake to remove it, considering the audience of Knoppix users.

I've seen quite a few suggestions of getting rid of the 2.4 series kernel as well. I don't know how many Knoppix live-cd users are using the live-cd to run a database server, but I'd guess it isn't many. Simply because the 2.6 kernel is next to succeed 2.4 series, does not make it the best choice for everyone. I'd guess that the 2.6 kernel, currently, is a worse choice, not better choice, for most every user of Knoppix. One should read <a href=http://www.2cpu.com/articles/98_1.html>this article</a>
http://www.2cpu.com/articles/98_1.html
before making a choice for oneself. And Linus and others have made similar remarks, and warnings, one which kernel would be faster, depending on what you are using it for. So to simply dismiss the 2.4 kernel, and suggest that it be removed, without carefully examining why, and considering knoppix's intended uses, is a mistake.

One last idea. Others have suggested dropping the cd version, and maintaining only a dvd version. And others have pointed out the mistake this would be. But I think a better idea would be to take programs like kword, and other duplicative applications, and putting them on a SECOND supplemental live CD, would be a good idea. I'd guess that a large number of Knoppix users have a cd-rom drive that came with their computer, and a cd-writer that they burn the cds with. Due to space constraints, some apps have to come out of the base cd. Put the removed apps in a second cd, and enable the second cd to run from the second cd drive, which should be the cd writer. This will enable users to be able to continue using their cd burner to burn newer knoppix disks or music/data cds by removing the supplemental cd temporarily without affecting the running of knoppix, will enable 2 more Gigabytes of applications to be included for those with the two drives, and yet will still enable knoppix to be used in single cd equipped computers as a rescue disk or to write letters/whatever with OpenOffice and use other apps as well. And the second cd will enable Quanta Plus, Firefox (or whatever the current name is), kword, and other apps to still be available.

One cd is good, a second supplemental cd that runs from the second cd burner drive (or can be run from a salvaged cd drive from an older computer which is very common), and that offers an additional 2 gig of applications to be accesible is better. The second cd can be removed to burn cds, and the work that goes into enabling a second cd to run from a second drive may also provide the guidance to others to enable a dvd to run from a (second) dvd drive, enabling many more gigs of applications to be available. And at the same time, because the base cd runs from the cd drive, it will enable the supplemental dvd to be removed for dvd burning, if the dvd drive is a dvd burner.

Just my 2 cents.