3 Things You'll Love in the New Knoppix Live Linux Distro

Experienced Linux users would know that when a Linux system initializes, it starts a lot of services, some of which are either unnecessary or not needed immediately (printing, for instance). So unless you know how to turn them off, it can be very frustrating to wait for the Linux desktop to fully load and become usable.

The good news is that those days are gone, at least with the latest release of Knoppix (version 7.0.1), the famous live Linux distro. Thanks to the efforts of Klaus Knopper (the creator of Knoppix) and his team, the new release provides you a usable desktop much faster than the earlier 6.7.x series. That's not all, there are lots of other powerful new features that have been added to the new distro, which we're going to talk about in this article. Incidentally, we've provided a copy of it on the DVD that accompanies the July print issue of PCQuest.

Get a Ready to use Desktop in Less Than One Minute

Before delving into this, it would be worth knowing that an uncompressed Knoppix 7.0.1 DVD is well over 9 GB (But its ISO image has been compressed to fit on a single-layer DVD). This is slightly larger than the size occupied post-installation by Windows Vista Gold (RTM, without any service packs). How long do you think such a large OS would take to boot? On a two years old Asus Eee PC 1201T netbook, the time between pressing the power-off button to a notification confirming successful mobile broadband connection on the GUI (on the default LXDE environment) was less than ONE minute! The earlier 6.7.x versions were not as fast.

So how did Knoppix make this change possible? The logic is simple-it first detects and initializes only THAT hardware which is needed to get to a usable desktop. This difference is more noticeable when you use it from a USB Flash drive as compared to DVD.

Run Memory Hungry Apps on Thin Clients Using ZRAM

Thin clients or systems with limited memory can now rejoice with the new ZRAM feature of Knoppix 7.0.1! Let's make it clear at the outset that this is not the zero-capacitor DRAM technology. ZRAM is actually a RAM compression technique, and the distro claims in its release notes that up to 75% of the main memory will be compressed if you're running out of RAM. As a result, the system can use up to twice as much “virtual” RAM. This opens up several possibilities for live Linux distros like Knoppix. For instance, you can run more memory hungry apps even on thin clients that don't have any local storage.

Quick Live-USB Creation and Encryption

This feature would greatly aid system administrators who need to create and hand-out live USB based Knoppix distros to employees who're constantly on the move. The earlier 6.7.x editions of Knoppix had an installer meant for preparing a live USB version of Knoppix. This used to require a reboot (for booting FROM the freshly prepared live USB Flash drive) in order to create a persistent overlay image as well as for encrypting it. It may be noted that this image can be of any maximum size (depending on the available free space) although with an enforced minimum limit.

Now, Knoppix 7.0.1 has an improved installer. It doesn't require reboots, so administrators can quickly create persistent overlay images as a post-installation step. Moreover, the administrator is presented with a nice slider to choose the desired size of the overlay image (which bounds itself as per the available free storage space). What's more, you can even choose to encrypt the resultant image (as well as provide a key for the same) right there itself, without rebooting.

Benefits of Creating Live USB Distro

1. Users get their own live USB drives that can be used wherever they get access to a system (and given Knoppix's key strength of hardware detection, it would be rare that the system which they get access to wouldn't be usable.

2. Users can immediately begin working on whichever system they get, create data, install applications needed AND carry all of these, including their user preferences and customization settings with them wherever they go. This is because these would be stored persistently in the overlay image and hence survive reboots, overcoming typical restrictions provided by a pure live OS.

3. AES encryption of their overlay images ensures high privacy of their work products and carefully customized settings are maintained in an encrypted form.

So far, we've just seen the tip of the iceberg. There are lots of other exciting features in the new distro. Let us know if you want to know anything else about it.

Getting it

For those of you who want the absolutely latest version of Knoppix (which is 7.0.3, dated 25 June 2012 as of writing this article), then you can go to http://tinyurl.com/hp7ww. This will take you to the (English) Mirrors' webpage listing all known mirrors supporting a variety of protocols like HTTP, FTP and RSYNC. Also note that official Torrents for versions 7.0.2 or 7.0.3 are not yet available.