Knoppix - Instant Gratification

Last Update: Monday 5 January 2004 14:10 GMT

Review

It is safe to say that the Debian-based Knoppix live CD has raised the bar of Linux distribution standards to a new level, especially with its automatic hardware detection and on-the-fly decompression. Knoppix is commonly used as an emergency rescue disk, as a Linux demo CD, as a tool to test a new computer before purchase or as a utility to read password-protected Microsoft Word documents on a Windows partition. It can even be used as a full-blown Linux distribution for every-day tasks. Robert Storey explains the reason why Knoppix has been given a permanent home on his computer's hard drive and why he never leaves home without it.

Something For Everyone

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
-- Charles Duell, Commissioner of US Patent Office, 1899

In these modern times it seems that there is a product to suit every whim and fancy. Whether you need a miniature Statue of Liberty with a clock in her (its?) stomach or a stuffed alligator with a light bulb in its mouth, you can rest assured that somebody somewhere is marketing it.

When it comes to software, much the same situation prevails. There are applications that do everything from psychoanalysis (in Emacs press M-x and type "doctor"), to helping you contact alien civilizations (SETI@Home).

Operating systems are not immune to this tendency towards specialization. Notepads, cell phones and perhaps your DVD player all have specialized operating systems. At the height of the dotcom bubble, there were pundits predicting that soon your online refrigerator would have an operating system, the purpose of which was allegedly to order milk when you needed it. Just why you couldn't buy your own damn milk was never explained to us.

And finally we come to Linux distributions. There are different distros for different purposes. Desktop Linux (in many flavors), server Linux, embedded Linux, Linux routers, Linux BIOS, Linux on the Halfshell. And every so often, somebody comes up with a whole new use for Linux that just makes everybody sort of just stop in their tracks and say, "Cool!" Which brings me (you are still with me, aren't you?) to the topic of this article - Knoppix.

Live From Germany

Knoppix is a "live CD" distro - just boot it and use it. You do need a CD drive of course, but you don't need a hard disk. The implications of this are significant. It means you have a portable Linux that you can take with you wherever you go. This can be used in a number of innovative ways - as a demo disk, as a rescue disk, as a way to use Linux at your local Windows-only Internet cafe. Some people even take a Knoppix disk with them when they go shopping for a new computer, a clever way to ensure that the hardware will be Linux compatible before you purchase it.

To be fair, Knoppix was not the first live CD ever created. Apple, for example, distributed MacOS (even before OSX) on a live CD. Linux has had DemoLinux, SUSE Live-Eval and Cool Linux, as well as others. But none of these have come close to the functionality of Knoppix, which could justifiably claim the title as "first useful live CD." Even though Knoppix has inspired a number of clones (Gnoppix, Morphix, Freeduc, and Quantian, to name a few), it still remains the most popular live CD distro by far.

Most people are just awe-struck the first time they see a Knoppix CD boot. Probably the thing that blows them away is the hardware auto-detection. There is really nothing to configure - just boot the CD, and two to three minutes later you have a beautiful desktop system. This is remarkable, given the lack of standards (and lack of driver documentation) that exists in the PC world.

Knoppix took the Linux world by storm in late 2002, but actually it's history is a little bit longer than that. Klaus Knopper of Germany started his experiment with "Knopper's *nix" about three years ago. As he tells the story, it wasn't his original intention to create a new Linux distro, but rather to learn how "el torito" (the booting mechanism on CDs) works, and how to get access to a whole CD from a minimal ramdisk system. However, his project soon attracted the attention of the LinuxTag association, which happily provided a mailing list and forum so that others could give their input. Though Klaus was (and still is) the solo developer of Knoppix, user feedback and bug-testing have helped make this distro the great success it is.

Deep Impact

Knoppix is one of the most up-to-date distros around. This is thanks to the fact that it is based on Sid, the "unstable" branch of Debian. Some people might be put off by the word "unstable," or the word "Sid" (the name of the mentally unstable kid in the movie "Toy Story"). Fortunately, in everyday use Knoppix is considerably more stable than many other distros (and infinitely more stable than many of the people who use it, including software reviewers).

Knoppix has had a deep impact on the Debian community. Though one could write a long list of praises about Debian, one notorious aspect of the distro has been its nightmarish installation program. This problem is being addressed, but at the moment it's still not resolved. The poor installer (as well as confusing text-based configuration utilities) has created a market opportunity for commercial Debian-based distros such Libranet, Xandros and Lindows. These are very worthy distros in their own right, but they do cost money. Knoppix, on the other hand, is free.

But wait, Knoppix only runs off a CD, right? Well, it was originally intended that way, but there was no way to hold back the raging tide of popular demand for a hard disk installer. Klaus himself felt that he had no time to work on that, so enthusiasts in the Knoppix community stepped forward to write a hard disk installation script. As it turns out, there were two such efforts, and the Knoppix CD now boasts two installation programs.

The Price Is Right

Knoppix comes on a single CD and is available as a free download from one of several mirrors which you can find listed at knoppix.com. Failing that, CDROMs can be ordered from numerous sources - again, look at knoppix.com for a list of vendors. As an example, LinuxCD.org offers the CD for US$1.99 plus shipping.

Also, don't be too surprised if your local Linux-friendly computer shop or computer bookstore has the CD. I personally acquired my first Knoppix CD at a back-alley computer bookshop for the equivalent of US$2. Given the rapidly growing popularity of Knoppix, don't be surprised to find the distro as a bonus CD attached to the cover of a Linux magazine.

Wherever you obtain Knoppix, you'll probably want the latest edition, and that is sometimes confusing. If you carefully monitor the download sites, you'll soon realize that a new *.iso file appears about monthly. What makes it confusing is that these frequently appearing files often have the same version number, followed by a date. A typical file name looks like this:

KNOPPIX_V3.3-2003-11-19-EN.iso

Ideally, one would expect mini-releases to have different version numbers (ie Knoppix version 3.3-1, version 3.3-2, etc). However, as Klaus himself readily confesses, personal laziness plays a part - version numbers in all README and HTML files on the CD would have to be changed. Since Klaus programs this mammoth project all by himself (other than the occasional donated shell script), and because the release schedule is so frequent, he's taken the easy way out and just lists the build date on the package name and boot screen. However, when a significant new change occurs, you are likely to see the version number bumped up by one digit. This commonly happens when a new release of KDE appears, not surprising since Knoppix is KDE-centric.

Giving Knoppix The Boot

There's not much more to starting up Knoppix than to put the CD into the drive and boot - or is there? Actually, when you first boot, you will be presented with a greeting screen, a few messages, and a prompt that says:

boot:

You could at this point just press [Enter], but you are also advised to push "F2 for help". If you push the F2 panic button, you'll be presented with a list of 13 possible options that you could pass to the kernel by typing them at the boot prompt. For example, in order to get a US English-style keyboard (the default is German), you would type:

boot: knoppix lang=us

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), the 13 suggested options displayed by the F2 key are not the only possibilities. There are many other options but there is not enough room on the screen to display them all. You are advised to look at the file knoppix-cheatcodes.txt which should be downloadable from the same place you got the Knoppix CD. Since we need to look at some of those cheatcodes right now, I've reproduced them below:

Knoppix cheatcodes

Screenshot 1: Cheatcodes

The option "floppyconfig" can be useful if you want to use settings which you saved to a floppy disk during a previous session. The settings could be used, for example, for setting up a network. The settings are saved in a script called knoppix.sh - there is an easy-to-use utility to do this called "saveconfig" (also located in the KDE menu under "KNOPPIX").

Knoppix saveconfig

Screenshot 2: Saveconfig dialog

Once you've typed your cheatcodes (if any), press [Enter] and watch the fun begin. Though invisible to the user, beneath the surface a lot is going on. Of prime interest is the hardware detection, which surprisingly relies on Red Hat's "kudzu" utility rather than Debian's "discover." The success rate of full hardware detection on a desktop machine is estimated to be at least 95%, but laptops are more troublesome, and Klaus estimates that perhaps only 75% of laptop bootups are trouble-free. This doesn't mean the machine won't boot, but it could mean that a certain piece of hardware (such as those notorious winmodems) may not be properly detected. Sound cards are also a potential trouble spot, though it can be argued that this is not a fatal flaw. With a little bit of luck, no user intervention should be required to get a perfectly configured system. If your machine is connected to a DHCP server, Knoppix will automatically get an IP address so you'll be network enabled.

One of the nice little surprises about Knoppix that you'll have about 1.8 GB of programs at your disposal, even though the CD only holds 700 MB of data. This is thanks to compression. SCSI emulation is built in, so if you have an IDE CD-R drive, it should work and you'll be able to burn CDs with the included K3b program.

Knoppix To The Rescue

Let us say I've forgotten the root password. To recover it, I could edit file /etc/shadow (don't try this until you've backed it up!) and remove all the characters between the first two colons in the line that begins with "root":

root:kX6yfIHgbljds:12407:0:99999:7:::

...could be edited to become...

root::12407:0:99999:7:::

Next time I boot up, root can then login without a password. And then I could use the "passwd" command to create a new password. The only question is: How can I edit /etc/shadow if I don't know the root password? The answer, of course, is to boot with a rescue disk - I will then have root privileges. In other words, Knoppix to the rescue.

Most people with enough geek background to use a rescue disk would probably like to get a text-mode console logged in as root. This is eminently possible with a Knoppix CD. As mentioned, when you first boot, you are delivered to a boot prompt where you are permitted to pass some options to the kernel. The options I use are as follows:

boot: knoppix 2 lang=us vga=normal

The "2" after "knoppix" means run-level 2, which is text-mode. There is simply no need to load X and the full KDE desktop if all you want is to perform a rescue operation. The "lang=us" part is because I prefer a US-style keyboard rather than the default German system. The "vga=normal" parameter will prevent the VESA framebuffer from loading (which is the default). Although framebuffer mode will stick a nice penguin in the upper-left portion of your screen, it will also do funny things with the text on screen - in particular, on my laptop it makes the login-prompt disappear off the bottom of the screen (other people have found that their screen goes blank when VESA framebuffer loads).

Occasionally, some users report seeing an error message like this:

hdb: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest
Error hdb: read_intr: error=0x10 { SectorIdNotFound },
LBAsect=256902992

This is caused by a bad CD (remember that in Linux, no messages are good messages). You can test the CD by typing "knoppix testcd" at the "boot:" prompt.

After typing in my parameters at the "boot:" prompt and pressing [Enter], I am soon delivered to a prompt that says this:

root@tty1[/]#

I am now logged in as root with all the utilities of a full Knoppix distro at my disposal. For me this is particularly cool, because one of the programs on the CD is Emacs, my favorite editor. In practically all other distros, the only editor available at the rescue prompt is Vi. While I don't wish to ignite a flame-fest over the relative merits of Emacs vs. Vi, I do find it very beneficial to have my preferred editor at my disposal when I'm attempting to rescue a borked installation. Some other included editors are Vim, Joe, Nedit and Kedit.

If you are trying to edit a file on your hard disk, you'll need to mount the partition that has the particular file you want to edit. If you don't happen to know what partitions you have, you can find out by looking in Knoppix's /etc/fstab file:

Knoppix fstab

Screenshot 3: /etc/fstab

What's interesting here are the lines below the comments labeled "Added by KNOPPIX". What /etc/fstab is showing us here are the partitions on the hard drive. As you can see in this example, there are six partitions (/dev/hda1, /dev/hda2, /dev/hda3, /dev/hda5, /dev/hda6, /dev/hda7). Knoppix finds these by running "fdisk -l", but (unfortunately) this will fail if your hard disk geometry is wrong. Such a thing is possible. At the risk of being flamed into ashes - I can say that I've personally noticed that installing FreeBSD 5.x on a machine with Linux partitions often results in an incorrect geometry setting (I'm not sure why).

Now that you know what partitions are available, you can mount the one which is causing you grief. Let us say that I need to correct a misconfigured file on /dev/hda3. I could mount the partition like this:

root@tty1[/]# mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/hda3

I can then "cd" to that partition:

root@tty1[/]# cd /mnt/hda3

You now have access to this partition and may use whatever rescue tools you deem fit. In the above example, I will use Emacs to edit /etc/shadow and remove the root password.

Installation To The Hard Drive

Once you've played with the Knoppix live CD, you might decide you like it so much that you want to install it to the hard drive. Unfortunately, Knoppix does not provide an "Install Me" button (though the idea has been suggested). Nevertheless, installation to the hard disk is eminently possible.

Christian Perle was the first volunteer to step forward and write a hard disk installation script for Knoppix. His script, knx-hdinstall, is very simple to use. This fine effort was later reworked by Fabian Franz who wrote knoppix-installer, which has more features (including a "Previous" button which lets you backtrack to previous menus). Both knx-hdinstall and knoppix-installer are now included on the Knoppix CD, so your first decision is to decide which one you'd like to use. I personally prefer the simplicity of knx-hdinstall, though it does lack the convenience of a "back" button.

So without further ado, put the CD into the drive and boot. At the "boot:" prompt, type the parameters you prefer, which in my case (once again) are:

boot: knoppix 2 lang=us vga=normal

and press [Enter]. You will now be at a root console. The application you want to run is knx-hdinstall (which is located in /usr/local/bin, and already in your PATH).

root@tty1[/]# knx-hdinstall

After this step, "cfdisk" is launched which will allow you to partition your hard drive. One thing worth knowing is the knx-hdinstall only allows you to install Knoppix in one partition - the "/" (root) partition, plus you are also able to add a swap partition. For most people this will do fine, but there are people who like to create fancy partitioning schemes (separate partitions for /, /boot, /home, /tmp, /usr, /var, /opt and swap. This has important security implications, and is recommended if you're running a server, but most desktop users will not suffer for having only two partitions. If you really do need so many separate partitions, then you probably shouldn't be running Knoppix.

You should make your root partition at least 3 GB (I personally prefer at least 5 GB). Knoppix will install 1.8 GB of files in that partition, but Linux partitions should never be more than 80% full (to allow space for automatic defragmenting). Besides, your personal data will take up some space, and if you burn CDs you'll need at least 700 MB for a temporary ISO file.

I recommend a swap partition of about 400 MB.

After you've created your root and swap partitions and saved, you are asked if you want to use a swap partition (definitely recommended). You first tell the installer where you want the swap partition to be located, and then you are asked where to mount the root partition. After this you have no more immediate decisions to make - knx-hdinstall begins installing everything on the CD to the hard drive. The installation is about as simple as it gets (almost too simple since you have only a few options available).

Once all the files are copied, you are asked a series of questions. Below are the questions, and the answers I chose:

Do you want to start the mail server (smail) at system boot? <NO>
Do you want to start the secure shell server (sshd) at system boot? <YES>
Do you want to start the samba server (smbd/nmbd) at system boot? <NO>
Do you want to start the cups server (cupsd) at system boot? <YES>
Do you want to start kdm (graphical login) at system boot? <NO>
Give a host name for this machine (without domain appended): <sonic>
Use DHCP broadcast? <NO>
Please enter IP Address for eth0. <192.168.0.1>
Please enter netmask for eth0. <255.255.255.0>
Please enter broadcast address for eth0. <none>
Please enter Default Gateway. <none>
Please enter Nameserver(s). <none>
Set a password for user root (input is not displayed). ********
Set password for user knoppix. ********
Do you want to install the boot loader (LILO) into the master boot record (MBR)? <YES>
Do you want to create a boot floppy (recommended)? <NO>

First Time Boot

You can remove the CD now and reboot. If you chose to install LILO in the MBR (master boot record), you should get a menu prompt allowing you to choose between booting "Linux" or (possibly) "Windows". If you had other Linux distros or the *BSDs installed on other partitions, these will not be shown (you'll have to edit /etc/lilo.conf to add additional OSs).

Knoppix boots fast - on my machine it takes 23 seconds (by contrast, SUSE takes 53 seconds). One reason for the fast boot is that few services are loaded by default.

You will have a choice of logging in either as root or user "knoppix" (you did remember the passwords you chose, didn't you?). The safer thing to do is log in as knoppix.

The default window manager is KDE, but there are other options - Window Maker (wmaker), Ice Window Manager (icewm), Fluxbox (fluxbox) and XFce (xfce). Notably absent is Gnome - there is simply no way to fit it on the Knoppix CD. Presumably you'll start with KDE. At your first login, you'll be greeted by "Kpersonalizer", the KDE configuration wizard. The only two important questions you'll be asked come first:

1) "Please choose your country" - if you are an English speaker, it's best to choose "C".

2) "Please choose your language" - I chose "English US".

The other questions all relate to style and appearance, and I'm happy enough with the defaults. However, despite having chosen English as my preferred language, I still found that in an Xterm I had a German keyboard. To change this, work through these menus:

Settings-Control Center-Regional & Accessibility-Keyboard Layout

The keyboard that worked for me was:
Generic 105-key (intl) PC
U.S. English w/ ISO9995-3

After this, I used KDE's tools to add user "robert" (rather than always being either "root" or user "knoppix"). To do this, open the menu "System" then "Kuser" (KDE's user manager) and type the root password when prompted - you can then add a new user. One thing you must consider is what groups you want this new user to belong to. By way of comparison, user "knoppix" is a privileged character, belonging to all the following groups: audio, cdrom, fax, floppy, games, dialout, dip, sudo, tape, usb, users, video, and voice. I decide to let my new user "robert" belong to the groups cdrom, dialout, dip, sudo and users.

Having done this, I log out and log back in as user "robert". I start Emacs, then create a new hidden file called .xinitrc which contains only one line:

exec fluxbox

I then save and exit Emacs. I log out of KDE and log back in again - now when X starts, I am in Fluxbox, which I prefer to KDE.

Aunt Tilly's Printer

CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) offers an easy way to configure a printer. During installation, I said "yes" to the question "start the cups server (cupsd) at system boot?" Now, to complete the configuration I must open a browser (Konqueror and Mozilla both do nicely) and then type this url:

http://localhost:631

I then click on "Printers", name my printer "Epson" and assign it to /dev/lp0. I choose the correct printer driver from the list, and print a test page. Quick success. Gosh, all this Linux stuff is easy - even Aunt Tilly could administer her own Knoppix machine.

Time Waits For No One

I spoke too soon. Surely Aunt Tilly wouldn't be able to figure out my next problem.

I quickly discover that my clock setting is wrong. When I open an Xterm and type "date", I get this:

robert@sonic:~> date
Thu Jan 1 15:06:40 CET 2004

The problem here is that the time is wrong (should be 22:06), and furthermore my time zone is not CET (surprise - Germany!) but rather CST (east Asia). Suddenly, I realize that knx-hdinstall never did ask me for my time zone. Not only that, but on further investigation (with the command "hwclock --show") I discover that my hardware clock and system time are no longer the same (they were previously). That is to say, my hardware clock is now set to UTC while the system time is CET. While there is nothing inherently wrong with having the hardware clock and system time set on different time zones, it can play havoc when you have other operating systems on the same machine (because they might not be set up the same way).

To remedy the situation, I must issue the following commands (in this order):

1) tzconfig (set time zone)
2) date MMDDHHmmCCYY (change the date & time)
3) hwclock --localtime (set hardware clock to localtime)
4) hwclock --systohc (set system time to hardware clock)

Finally, I check it:

robert@sonic:~> hwclock --show
Thu Jan 1 22:25:13 2004 -0.639414 seconds

Tips, Tricks And Hints

I've already mentioned my dislike of VESA framebuffer mode. Now I want to banish it forever so that when I am at the console it will be in pure text mode. To do this, I become root with the "su" command and comment out the first line in /etc/lilo.conf that says:

vga=791

Still as root, I must then run the command "lilo" to write these settings. Next time I boot, VESA framebuffer mode will be gone for good.

As user robert, I edit/create files .bashrc and .bash_profile with the following content:

alias rm='rm -i'
alias cp='cp -i'
alias mv='mv -i'
set -o noclobber

alias startx='startx -- -dpi 100'

PS1="\u@\h:\w> "
export PS1

The first three lines force me to answer "yes/no" when I respectively remove, copy (overwrite) and move (overwrite) a file. The "set -o noclobber" parameter prevents me from overwriting a file with other commands such as "cat".

Tiny menu fonts are hard on my poor tired eyes. Rather than replace my eyeglass lenses with magnifying glass, I want to make the fonts larger. My above-mentioned "startx" alias will increase the font size significantly (I could use "120" instead of "100" but that would be ridiculously large). Note that this neat trick won't work unless you are starting X manually with "startx" (as opposed to automatic graphic login with gdm).

The lines containing "PS1" refer to my prompt at the command line. I really like a prompt that tells me what directory I'm in, like this:

robert@sonic:~/programs/python>

All of the above modifications that I've made to .bashrc and .bash_profile won't take effect until I log out and log back in again.

You Need Connections

It's time to connect to the outside world. I can do this with both a dial-out modem, or a high-speed ADSL modem using PPPOE (PPP over ethernet).

With KDE running, I can choose the menu Internet, then the submenu Connect. Here I will find a submenu KPPP (Internet Dial-UP Tool) and ADSL/PPPOE Configuration. Both are pretty self-explanatory and you shouldn't have much trouble using them. However, if you are not logged in as either root or user "knoppix", then (whoever you are) you must belong to the groups "dialout" and "dip" - otherwise your attempt to configure these services will fail.

If you are not in KDE, but rather a light window manager such as Fluxbox, you can open an Xterm window and type "kppp" or "pppoeconf" depending on which device you want to configure.

PPPOE can be configured to connect at boot time, or you can configure it so that you turn it on/off as you need it. I prefer the latter. To turn it on, open an Xterm and type "pon dsl-provider" - to turn it off, "poff dsl-provider". Ordinary users can issue these commands only if they are members of groups "dialout" and "dip". A further requirement is that /usr/sbin/pppoe is set suid root, which can be done as follows:

chmod +s /usr/sbin/pppoe

To make sure this worked, check the permissions level:

robert@sonic:~> ls -l /usr/sbin/pppoe
-rwsr-xr-- 1 root dip 31020 Sep 17 03:13 /usr/sbin/pppoe

The above is now the default on Knoppix 3.3 (on earlier versions it was not).

Installing Programs

Despite Klaus's best efforts, there is just no way to squeeze a complete desktop distro onto a 700 MB CDROM, even with file compression. Fortunately, Knoppix is Debian-based, so you can use Debian's tools to add thousands of additional programs if you feel the need.

Debian is justifiably famous for it's APT (Advanced Package Management) system of managing software packages. You can install packages from a CDROM or directly from the Internet. The file which controls where Debian looks for packages is /etc/apt/sources.list. When you attempt to install a package, Debian will look in this file and seek the package from the first source it finds on the list (it is possible to have more than one source, just list them in order of preference).

I don't want to spend too much of this review explaining how Debian is structured, but an important point to remember is that Debian has three main branches - Stable, Testing, and Unstable (there is actually a fourth branch called Experimental, but let's not get into that). Since Knoppix is (mostly) based on Unstable, I was a little surprised to find that /etc/apt/sources.list had Stable and Testing listed first. You can edit this file and change the order, or maybe just comment out those sources you don't want to use. I would suggest backing up the original sources.list file before you do anything (maybe to /etc/apt/sources.list.old).

If you have a set of recent Debian Unstable CDROMs, you could use those to build a sources.list file, by typing this:

apt-cdrom -d /cdrom add

You'll be prompted to insert a CDROM in the drive. Do this in reverse order, starting from the highest (maybe CD No. 11) to the lowest (CD No. 1).

Once you've got sources.list configured to your satisfaction, you can start installing programs using the apt-get command. One thing you might want to install right away is a firewall program (Knoppix does not include one). I use Guarddog - to install this:

apt-get install guarddog

You then need to launch guarddog (as root) and set it up.

You can find a list of all Unstable packages on the Debian web site here. Another way to take a look at all the packages available for your distribution is to examine the database (this will depend on where your /etc/apt/sources.list is pointing) - do that with this command:

apt-cache search .

This will give you thousands of hits. It's probably more useful to be more specific. For example, if you want to know what packages are available for spell checking, you could try this:

apt-cache search spell

When you find something that looks interesting, you can get for more detail about it with the "apt-cache show" command:

apt-cache show ispell

Finally, if you don't like all this command-line crap, install the package synaptic - it will give you a nice graphic interface for installing and deleting packages.

You've Got Mail

Kmail is the default email client with Knoppix, and it does a commendable job. If you'd rather try something else, some other notable options are Sylpheed, Evolution, and Mozilla Thunderbird.

I receive hundreds of email messages a day. Some of this comes from friends and acquaintances, while the majority is mail from mailing lists that I subscribe to. I also get quite a few generous offers from vendors telling me where I can buy Valium without a prescription, how to get my colon cleaned, various methods to make money fast, get out of debt, lose weight now, or enlarge my body parts. I even occasionally receive greetings from various former African dictators who want to send me $10 million.

Much as I would like to take advantage of these fantastic bargains, I just don't have time. Therefore, I employ a relatively little-known program called Mailfilter. It is not difficult to use. You first set up a list of filter rules, and then run the command "mailfilter" - it will go online and delete all the unwanted crap in your mailbox without you having to download any of it. You can set a maximum size for your messages - any message that exceeds it will be deleted (a good way to avoid downloading those 10 MB digital photos of Aunt Tilly's French poodle). On the other hand, if you really want to see Aunt Tilly's French poodle, you can exempt her from the filter rules. Mailfilter is one of those programs that has changed my life.

Also worth looking at are Pop3browser and Popcheck - these allow you to interactively view your mailbox and delete files you don't want to download.

Conclusion

I downloaded Knoppix on Christmas day, and (all jokes aside about gifts from Santa Klaus), I am very grateful to Mr. Knopper for the fine piece of work he has produced.

Knoppix is a stunning distro - just watching it boot gets people hopping like a kangaroo on steroids. I can think of no better way to tempt your Windows-addicted friends to try Linux than to hand them a Knoppix disk. The way Knoppix auto-configures all your hardware without intervention is awesome. The fact that this distro is as free as air is another strong selling point.

Installation to the hard disk is not difficult, but a total n00b might find the configuration a little bit tricky. Knoppix was never really intended to become a desktop distro - but then again Viagra wasn't intended for its current usage (it was developed as a drug to treat heart problems, before certain "side effects" were discovered). In the everyday world, there are now probably more Knoppix installations being run from the hard drive than from a CDROM.

Having a portable Debian that I can carry around on a CD offers me instant gratification as long as I can find a computer with a CD drive installed. The fact that Knoppix can perform extra duty as a rescue disk is just icing on the cake. As an advertisement for a well-known credit card company once said, "Don't leave home without it."

Please visit this forum on PCLinuxOnline if you wish to discuss the review.

Review Notes
Date
4 January 2004
Author
Robert Storey
Special Thanks...
The author would like to thank the following persons for their kind assistance: • Albi • Michael Rudas • Tim Botzelmann • Achim Unger • Luka Frelih • David Cuny

Test Configuration
Motherboard
Asus A7v8x-x mainboard, VIA KT-400 chipset
Processor
AMD Athlon 1600
Video Card
nVidia Riva TNT2 64, 32MB
Memory
256 MB, DDR-RAM
Hard Disk
Seagate 40 GB, 7200 RPM
Network
VIA Technologies VT6102 [Rhine-II]
Sound Card
SoundBlaster PCI 64

Knoppix Specifications
Version
V3.3-2003-11-19-En
Release Date
19 November 2003
Kernel
2.4.22
GUI
XFree86 4.3.0
File Systems
• ReiserFS • ext3 • ext2 • FAT • ISO9660
Minimum Requirements
• i586 processor or above • minimum 128MB RAM (for KDE) • minimum 3GB hard disk space • CD-ROM or floppy drive • SuperVGA monitor
Platforms
• x86
Features
• Live CD • Superb rescue disk • Automatic hardware detection • Frequent up-to-date releases • Two hard disk installation programs • English & German ISOs
Bundled Software
• Apache 1.3.29 • Cups 1.1.20 • Emacs 21.3 • GCC 3.3.2 • Gimp 1.2.5 • glibc 2.3.2 • gnumeric 1.2.4 • GTK+ 2.2.4 • KDE 3.1.4 • KOffice 1.2.1 • Mozilla 1.5-3 • MySQL 4.0.17 • OpenOffice 1.1.1a • Perl 5.8.2 • Python 2.3.3 • Samba 3.0.1 • vim 6.2 • XFree86 4.3.0 • xine 0.9.22 • Xmms 1.2.8
Price
Free download, or 3rd party purchase approximately US$5
Support
• Forum • Mailing List

Resources
Home Page
• www.knoppix.com
Quick Links
• News • FAQ
Purchase
• Vendors
Download Links
• Download mirrors
Documentation
• Knoppix Docs • Cheatcodes
External Resources
• Debian Project

Glossary
Live CD
A CD-based distro that can run without the need to be installed on the hard disk
APT - Advanced Package Tool
Debian's (and Knoppix's) system for managing binary software packages. Includes the ability to install, uninstall, and resolve dependencies.