knoppix essential packages?

[Capricorny]

Dave,
You are essentially asking for a Knoppix version (adaptation) of debootstrap. I have also asked for that, and I think there is a need for it.
In my experience, the approach to minimalism by substantial package purging is unsafe at any speed. Remove, games, some utilities, LibeOffice, yes - but it is very easy to get a malfunctioning system when proceeding further.
But, how much free space do you need? I would guess you could at least free a few hundred megabytes safely - and I would have kept it at that. Or created a small DVD ISO instead of CD, to avoid that CD size limit.

[dwstarke]

Hate to throw cold water on all this remastering, but is it possible that someone who has created a minimalist knoppix that still does hardware-detection and creates the unionfs with persistence could just make it available? I'm having trouble in this area also and would like to start from the smallest possible iso. If someone has such a beast, please make it available.

[Capricorny]

Hate to throw cold water on all this remastering, but is it possible that someone who has created a minimalist knoppix that still does hardware-detection and creates the unionfs with persistence could just make it available? I'm having trouble in this area also and would like to start from the smallest possible iso. If someone has such a beast, please make it available.

Well, I see that you probably don't know how easy remasterings can be done nowadays I have even remastered running in a virtual machine under qemu, so the pc may still be used for all other things during remastering. Remastering from your own adaptation is almost always faster, safer and simpler than working out from someone else's.

I also see that you probably haven't worked much with upgrading. Having created minimal versions of a few Knoppix releases manually, that's a thing of the past for me. That very effect may be one reason why there seem to be few updated minimalist Knoppix offerings nowadays. I would guess many in need of such things will rather work out from Ubuntu's version of debootstrap - which I have turned to myself, too. Chrooting into that from Knoppix is, IMHO, one of the most efficient ways to achieve minimalism available right now.

A Knoppix version of debootstrap would let you create those beasts you are looking for quickly, easily and safely

[dwstarke]

I can't determine (on my own) which packages to take out of the mix. I have had some experience in the ancient past of recompiling Slackware 0.98, but no experience with modern linux. I don't mind remastering and I think I'm pretty close to taking Knoppix 7.0.3 and chrooting into it and then being able to reconstitute the iso. What I cannot seem to be able to do at all is remove packages that I think should not effect the iso, yet I have problems. This is exactly what you describe in your original post. So, I guess, that I wish there was a minimalist Knoppix that I could add to, since my hunch is that adding won't create as many problems as removing. Forgive me if my logic is faulty.

Thanks for your guidance here. I have no idea about Ubuntu.

[Capricorny]

I can't determine (on my own) which packages to take out of the mix. I have had some experience in the ancient past of recompiling Slackware 0.98, but no experience with modern linux. I don't mind remastering and I think I'm pretty close to taking Knoppix 7.0.3 and chrooting into it and then being able to reconstitute the iso. What I cannot seem to be able to do at all is remove packages that I think should not effect the iso, yet I have problems. This is exactly what you describe in your original post. So, I guess, that I wish there was a minimalist Knoppix that I could add to, since my hunch is that adding won't create as many problems as removing. Forgive me if my logic is faulty.

Thanks for your guidance here. I have no idea about Ubuntu.

I think there is no fault in logic per se, the main problem is that it seems that even Klaus Knopper may occasionally have problems stripping down to a CD version. Because of special adaptations and some general differences in approach, Knoppix and general Debian are quite different distro-wise, and seemingly diverging. Last year, I was able to mix and match vanilla Debian and Knoppix 6.4.4 for a pure 64-bits Knoppix version, couldn't repeat that with Knoppix 7.X.

Ubuntu is quite close to both, and my recent experience with it has been quite positive. (Much better than some years ago.) Maybe Ubuntu's version of debootstrap (which has worked flawlessly for me) could be adapted to Knoppix?

I think your hunch that adding is much safer than removing is quite to the point for today's versions. And because Klaus K's approach to booting and HW detection is the only one I have seen that I really like, I would really like to have a minimalist Knoppix. But anyone who wants something like that right now, should probably check out Ubuntu live.

[dwstarke]

To do so would probably mean we would have to Kang (android slang) the scripts and the Knoppix deb packages Klaus created with the normal init sequence of the Debian live. I cannot judge whether this might be easier than stripping the Knoppix cd or not. One advantage would be a possible unification of packages into "testing" Debian, which might make remastering "even easier"TM

What do you think?