Just the thing for Christmas!
When getting Linux on your PC your hard disk must be partitioned. Would you give up Linux because you don’t know how to partition?

Well... you don’t have to think about partitioning or any other technical stuff to get Linux on your PC. You put in a CD and work on Linux; when you remove the CD you’re back to your old system. Not a single change is made to your existing system.

This is possible due to a Linux distribution called KNOPPIX. Here is a short review of KNOPPIX 3.3. KNOPPIX is unique because it’s self-contained, which means you don’t need any extra storage facilities such as a hard disk. Once you boot from the CD you have access to a diverse range of tools and programmes. The CD contains about 1.9GB of programmes. Not a single file needs to be copied to your hard disk!

Because it’s completely running from the CD, if you have a slow CD drive there will be a relatively long delay. But believe me, considering the advantages; it’ll be worth it.

What is KNOPPIX?
KNOPPIX is another Linux distribution like Red Hat, SuSE etc. It is based on the popular distribution Debian. Let’s see what you need to run this cool piece of software.

System requirements

* Intel compatible processor (486 or better)
* 20 MB of RAM for text mode. At least 82 MB for graphics mode with KDE. (To run other office applications at least 128 MB of RAM is recommended).
* A bootable CD-ROM/DVD drive, or alternatively, a boot floppy and a standard CD-ROM/DVD drive (IDE/ATAPI or SCSI).
* A standard SVGA compatible graphics card.
* A standard serial or PS/2 mouse, or IMPS/2-compatible USB mouse.

After inserting the CD you have to set your BIOS to boot from the CD. If your BIOS won’t support that feature you have to use a boot floppy to boot the system. There are floppy images in the CD and a special programme to copy them to diskettes is also included. You have to use this special programme (rawrite2) to copy the images.

KNOPPIX also supports booting from the network. Once it’s booted it acts like you booted locally. It also has an automatic hardware detection scheme that successfully identifies the monitor, video and sound cards. This scheme is not perfect; sometimes it will not be able to detect your video hardware. If so, you can run X Window System by passing a few parameters to the initial boot prompt. Once the system is booted you have access to a number of cutting edge software at no extra cost. They include the following;

Office productivity
With OpenOffice 1.1 you have the latest office suite that comes with word processing, spreadsheet, drawing, equation editor and presentation programmes that are compatible with Microsoft Office files. You can edit and save your existing office files without hassle.

There’s another office suite called KOffice that comes with KNOPPIX and it too has word processing, spreadsheet, presentation etc. These are also compatible with Microsoft Office files.

If you are not happy with the spreadsheet packages in KOffice or OpenOffice you have another choice; Gnumeric. Then there’s the personal information manager called KOrganizer. A fax wizard to send and receive faxes.

With Adobe Acrobat and XPDF you’ll be happy to view your LaTeX tutorials without a fuss (or any .pdf file for that matter)

Development
I was able to find out C/C++, Python, Perl, TCL/TK and Java language support in KNOPPIX. There maybe others that I missed. You also get KDevelop (a GUI programme to do C/C++ programming.

Editors
There’s an array of editors available in KNOPPIX including VIM, Emacs, Joe, Nedit and many others. Chances are that your favourite is on the list.

Multimedia
XMMS multimedia player (a Winamp replacement) is included. Support for OGG Vorbis, MP3 and many other sound formats are there. One of the most popular VCD/DVD players - Xine is also available.

The ultimate open source graphics studio GIMP is included in the package. Ready to be run at a single mouse click, Kooka is an image scanning and OCR programme to assist you to get pictures from another computer.

Digital audio junkies will readily appreciate Audacity and MIDI fans have Rosegarden, a complete midi sequencer and integrated music notation editor. Your digital camera can be controlled by gtkam (a graphical front-end for gphoto2). You can view all the pictures that you have taken with your camera. There are zooming, deleting and saving facilities. There are drivers available for various digital cameras. You can plug your palm pilot and do what you want to do with the GUI tools provided.

nvtv is a GUI NVIDIA tv-out configuration programme. You can burn your OGG/MP3 music files with K3B that resembles a popular proprietary CD writing programme. If you are into desktop publishing you’ll appreciate the facilities provided by Scribus.

Games
There are many games including Chrominum, Falcon’s Eye and much more.

Internet
There are two state of the art browsers that guarantee the most close to the standard (W3C) rendering of web pages. Mozilla 1.5 and Konqueror are programmes that help you set up your PPP, ISDN and ADSL connections easily.

Here are some highlights from the ‘Internet’ section;
Gaim, Xchat, remote desktop connection, network neighbourhood facility called LinNeighborhood, download managers (KGet), complete SSH suite (OpenSSH), telnet, ftp, my favourite mail client Mutt, video conferencing facilities (GnomeMeeting) and more!

Network security programmes Nessus, Nmap, IPTraf (interactive IP Lan monitor) are quite effective.

Miscellaneous
A programme called KGeo is included for interactive geometry like programmes such as Euklid, Zirkel und Lineal or Kseg.
Another programme, called KStars that is a graphical desktop planetarium, will help you if you’re bored with the system. Try out the functions of that programme. I won’t spoil the fun by divulging everything.

Apart from KDE (the default desktop manager) there are WindowMaker, IceWM, larswm, twm, Fluxbox and XFCE to make your desktop experience more enjoyable.
There’s much more interesting stuff packed in the KNOPPIX CD. You will be able to buy KNOPPIX at a local CD store in the near future. The website of the Lanka Linux User Group (www.linux.lk) too will soon have a list of places/shops that you can get KNOPPIX.

Remember it’s not freeware or shareware. What you get is not pirated software either. It comes with the GNU General Public Licence that preserves your right to use and modify the programmes. If you own a fast connection to the Internet you can download the latest version from www.knoppix.net I hope you have a great time with KNOPPIX as I did.

Sent in by Chintana Wilamuna

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