I watched my friend Jason Uppenborn using KNOPPIX during the last meeting (uh... not while you were presenting, Aaron, he's was all ears) ;-) and it got me interested. I did a little research yesterday and read that it was Red Hat-based. To hear that CLUG's is Debian-based is exciting. But as I'm reading, I'm hearing more and more about Debian, and wondering if someone made a mistake about the Red Hat part. Can anyone speak to this? At any rate, I'm curious now about some of the inner workings of the distro.
I currently have no space to install Linux on my work laptop, and I have not had the time I would like lately to work on my Linux desktop at home, so after the meeting I was excited about running Linux actively on my laptop, but I have no KNOPPIX! And then I realized I have the Slackware 8.1 Ready-to-Boot CD which is the Slack 8.1 distro running off CD-ROM, similar to KNOPPIX, although some of the underlying technologies are different (and sounds like they are less robust than KNOPPIX's implementation -- compressed filesystems, et. al. Here is a link to some digging someone did regarding KNOPPIX's use of filesystems: www.mdlug.org/archives/mdlug/msg12891.html). I have one question I couldn't get a sufficient Google answer to yesterday, and I think some understanding of the way the distro works off of CD would probably enlighten me. But if anyone can just answer the question outright, I would love to hear it: Can CD-based Linux distros be run fully (or as much as possible) in RAM? I have 512MB and I was bummed when I couldn't add a Flash plugin to Mozilla because it lived in /usr/lib which was read-only. :-( I'm curious to find out how much I can install, compile, etc. -- basically, I would like to be able to use Slackware or KNOPPIX (Linux, period) on a daily basis at work, but I need a few different utils, some of which do not come in the basic distro, or are read-only. Suggestions? Ideas? Heh, maybe I'm biting off a mouthful, so if I should wait for a prezzy on the topic or anyone wants to take it to private e-mail let me know. But it sounds like KNOPPIX, etc. are extremely robust and stand a chance of changing the distribution and usage of Linux as we know it. That is truly exciting. Curtis. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2003 7:35 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: (clug-talk) Re: new clug Distro ----- Original Message ----- From: Jeff Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thursday, February 6, 2003 11:52 am Subject: new clug Distro > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > I'm sorta new to linux, I know a bit about linux, I know hot to > compilesource, and a few other, things, I'd like to help you crate > a new > distro, I mean why stick a distro that just stays on a CD-ROM, > when you > and I (and others hopefully) could create a new distro for CLUG, my > computer specs are 1.5 GHz 256 MB DDR RAM. please reply and let me > know,I'm excited about this idea. Hi Jeff, Having done what you suggested already with MaxOS, and Firewall. I can attest to just how brutal an undertaking it is. Building a distro is a grueling, thankless undertaking. Maintaining it only compounds the matter. With regard to the promotional CLUG modified version of Debian Knoppix that I now seem to be maintaining, you should know that it has utilities to have it permanently installed on your hdd already making it one of the most comprehensive Linux distros of the day. To know KNOPPIX is to love KNOPPIX. As such there is a number of things I would like to contribute to KNOPPIX, not the least of which is a new and improved ui installer for KNOPPIX which could install a number of other very popular distros visa vi a network install. For example there is no reason we could not invoke the RH Anaconda installer and perform a network install, or for that matter Slackware, etc, etc... As such I think you could glean a substantial amount of knowledge working with us and congratulate you for stepping to the plate.. I will vollunteer to hold a introductory ./lecture/tutorial/workshop on KNOPPIX ./use/construction if anybody is interested in contributing to the CLUGG variant. All the best, Dan
