I have an assocoate who swears by Gentoo Linux. He's constantly trying to get me to switch even though I've told him more than a dozen times that I like Knoppix-based distros. Well, last September I advised him in the building of a AMD 64-bit dual-core desktop, 500GB total HD space, 4GB RAM total. Well, when he started to install Gentoo, I saw something that I really liked... He was downloading packages for installation, while he was installing. Mind you his install took a total of 4 hours due to bandwidth limitations on a T1 college network, but I thought that this was pretty cool.

My idea (mind you I don't know if anyone else has suggested this) would help users with slower connections, and would probably work best for those already familiar with Knoppix. Anyway, I really like the Knoppix 4.0 DVD, the packages on it blew me away! However, I had to get a copy from a friend who had downloaded his through bittorrent. Now, here's where my idea comes in...

(1): Make a Knoppix version that is substantially smaller than 700 MB, but that still has all the great hardware detection plus installer scripts, network-setup utilities, Bash, web browser, and a CD-burning app... Preferably with a small WM like IceWM, or Fluxbox, or even with no WM at all.

(2): From this live CD the user could then install to HD, setup and connect to the net, then select a Knoppix-package download mirror, and then select which packages he or she wants. Then just simply run a script/utility to download and install the selected packages.

(4): Once the user has all the necessay packages installed, then the user can run the CD-burning application to make the remastered CD.

(4): This way a user can make a simple remaster upfront, as well as not tax bandwidth limitations so much (by downloading smaller packages).

This may not be the 'best' idea, but I think that it could help others to create a simple remaster, also to help out users who don't have a DVD burner or even a high-speed connection.

Cool? Yes? No? Let me know what you think.