I remember a cool implementation detail about the earliest Knoppix version (don't remember which one) I had that was documented somewhere on that disc - when constructing a release filesystem image, the boot process was instrumented to get an ordered list of files being read. Then that list was fed into an image building program so when written to a CD, the files will be organized in an optimal order so a linear read with some readahead would get you a better boot time.
I built a 40 (later 80) node cluster with clusterknoppix ~2006 to run a bunch of physics simulations off of old library computers after I replaced a bunch of PSU fans. Kept my cubicle toasty until we moved them into a random subterranean room I think was used for some early nuclear research at university.
I used to use knoppix to rescue broken systems back in the day, including many a Windows machine. Always did what I needed it to. Glad to see it’s still around.
Wow, it's been a while since I heard that name.
Knoppix saved my bacon a couple of times, I remember using their live CD.
Knoppix was useful when a linux box got hosed and would not boot for some reason. Boot into Knoppix, you have an easy root shell and almost all the tools you'd need to fix a broken system.
Haven't used it in many years however, since most distro installers now boot a "live" linux so I just use that.
If you like Knoppix, Slitaz is also worth checking out. I think slitaz has more updated release at the moment.
The go-to live cd that helped me fix many Windows XP installs! Thanks for the memory.
I first thought there was something new about it
When I was a kid I got obsessed with Linux, but my family only had one PC in the living room. After an attempt to set up Windows/Linux dual boot where I messed up the partition table, my parents banned me from tinkering with it. Luckily I discovered Knoppix and other live distros, which allowed me to boot into a safe environment to play around in.
I remember also hosing the bootloader somehow on my first try of Linux, luckily my personal desktop so no collatoral damage!
After that I always had a CD wallet thing with copies of sysresccd and supergrubdisk and others (including I think an old knoppix cd from a linux magazine).
Klaus Knopper, now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time.
That's a blast from the past. I remember repairing my main install from a minimal Knoppix on my 1GB USB drive... Good old times.
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At one point in the very early 2000s my HDD failed and I was diskless for a while. I used Knoppix to be able to run things using a floppy to store my configs. I've been using Linux as daily driver ever since. The necessity to do a trial by fire made me pretty good at it and helped me in my professional life as well.
Thank you Knoppix.
Kanotix was even better. Kano built on top of knoppix.
Lateron I think this was renamed to sidux, based on debian sid.
Been quite a while since I last used either though. Nowadays most linux distribution .iso files work - they may not be as adjusted as knoppix or kanotix but my use cases have changed. I mostly use manjaro these days, it works quite well as base system (I modify it anyway, so what I am using has only little parts of manjaro left, mostly just the linux kernel and glibc, rest I already compiled anew from source).
Fond memories of Knoppix from when I was younger. Many many thanks to the authors.
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What a blast from the past. Seeing Knoppix on my room mate's PC in 2004 is what led to a 20+ year ongoing adventure with Linux, Debian, gaming on Linux, compiling games with a friggin compiler and automake, programming, it all started with that distro.
I fixed a lot of Windows machines, especially partition issues, with Knoppix up until around 2014. I used to also use the wireless tools to detect rogue access points in hotels where my employer was providing internet access. Those were some good times, and helped me learn quite a bit about networking and security in general.
I love that so many people have fond memories, and I assume it says something about the state of bootable linux distros that Knoppix is not as unique anymore.
Knoppix was my first experience with Linux over 20 years ago; my brother-in-law introduced me to it and it was really neat. "My computer isn't just Windows!"
Now with major distros offering live sessions in their installer, you can just hop into Ubuntu/Fedora/Arch.
There was a time that this was the easiest way to install Debian.
100%. The detection/configuration of hardware just worked out of the box. It's a must-have for a livecd and still a reeeealy nice-to-have for your permanent install back then.
I was maybe 9 years old when I first used Linux, and it was with Knoppix and KDE. Loved early plasma. Arch is my thing these days, but KDE is still my DE of choice. Glad to see KHTML from Konquerer living in Blink and WebKit these days, too!
I was a bit older but not by much. I used Knoppix to recover some data from my old Windows PC, great first contact with Linux.
Knoppix got really popular in Germany in the 2000s when it was still common that PC magazines were sold with CD-ROMs. Especially c't, Germany's most prestigious computer magazine, made Knoppix popular with their bootable Linux CDs for data rescue issues.
c't published articles about a few programs that I wrote (many years ago). They always sent me copies of the magazine with a CD when they did that. The CD had all the free/open source programs that were discussed in the magazine. Very good publisher.
Knoppix: The OG. No AI was used.
Back in 2001 or so, I was studying in a college in another city, and traveled back home during breaks and on some weekends. On one occasion, I took a Knoppix mini-CD with me, repartitioned the hard drive on my mom's computer to cut a small ext2 partition for myself, installed Knoppix (there was a script to install it on HDD), set grub timeout to something like 1 second so no one would ever notice, and enjoyed my very own hidden Linux every time I visited home.
I'm pretty sure that if I manage to find that HDD, it will boot today.
Knoppix used to have a really good desktop environment with effects and games. I think it had KDE with compiz-fusion. That was awesome. Now it's just bland lxde.
compiz was amazing, I remember playing with the wobbly windows for hours
I started using Linux with Redhat but when they stopped doing the free version (sometime in the late 90's) I wanted to switch to Debian so I used Knoppix as a stepping stone to get there. Really made it easy. Then, somewhere around 2006 or 2007, I met Klaus Knopper and his wife at one of the Ubuntu developer summits. I think it was the one in Paris. Really nice guy and with the help of his wife, they did a lot of work to help people with vision impairment use Linux.
This brings me back. Used the live cd (then later thumb drive) at my university whenever I needed to use the computers. Would just reboot into it.
In Grade 10 we'd pass around a Knoppix CD in the computer lab to boot up into something a bit more useful than the "Student Vista" locked down Windows XP machines.
I remember there being a sliding puzzle game in the theme of assembling molecules. I remember this because I remember a very classic argument between two teenagers over "propene" being a typo of "propane" vs. being an actual chemical. If only they were sitting in front of a device that could help them find the answer.
Katomic.
puppy linux on a live USB here :)
Puppy via USB was one of my first. My real first was SUSE distributed via CD-ROM in a GNU/Linux magazine. I used to run Puppy from not a usb drive but a hard drive in an external closure plugged into the USB port. I was a poor college kid and that's all I had.
Knoppix was the first Linux distro I ever tried back in the early 2000s. IIRC it was only a few hundred megs.
At the time it didn't have the overlayfs feature which often felt limiting since most directories were read only. Slax felt like a serious upgrade since you could install more packages after booting the CD.
I think Knoppix was the original live CD distro though?
I remember running live and then installing from Yggdrasil in the early 90s on 486 with 8MB RAM and 250MB hard disk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux/GNU/X
Really liked Knoppix for a lot of things, though. Used to take it to the county used-sales office and boot the PCs they were selling to test for functionality and Linux compatibility.
This is a blast from the past. Knoppix saved my life a few times, it was the easiest way to mount a drive with a broken partition table or something else went that haywire with a dual-boot system. It was also the safest option for doing something on a public computer without leaving a trace (though back then NIC drivers were always a bit finicky).
My first Knoppix CD may have actually come by way of the front cover of Linux Magazine.
Same there. The huge amount of software and geeky toys that came with it was impressive. From Emacs itself to the BB demo, libre games and whatnot.
You could install it to a hard disk and get a ready to use Debian Testing install with one of the best hardware autodetection settings ever.
I can second this. Very similar experience. Was a blast to see this pop up here.
Knoppix 1.0 is still my first experience of linux that worked right out of the box. Forever gave me a fondness for live CD/DVD booting.
I remember a younger me being dazzled by the colored boot text. Good times!
Same here! I used it all the time back in the 2000s. I have fond memories of sliding a CD into an old desktop and using Linux.
Wait, I thought the official web page for Knoppix was <https://knoppix.net/>? What is this knopper.net?
Knoppix.net literally says this on their homepage:
> Knoppix.net is a resource for users, developers, and testers of Knoppix. The official website for Knoppix is on Klaus Knopper's website at knopper.net.
This was the first Linux I used (mainly, to play Nibbles for Knoppix). The live-boot CD was a treasured belonging. Good times!
Brings back memories. One of my earlier Linux touch points. There was also this sibling Kanotix. Good times.
Fun to see this on the front page. I'm curious if ops intent was to share something cool is trigger a bunch of nostalgia because they definitely did the latter.
I remember using this when it first came out. It was a game changer for doing forensics back before full disk encryption was a common thing.
Very nostalgic! I remember using this a few times around maybe 2005 when a Windows system got corrupted. Knoppix would boot from the CD and let you recover files from your HD. Loved it
I frequently see things on HN where people just share the website of a well known project. I assume it's for people who legit never heard of it. Maybe they're younger. I think of a saying, every year a new generation discovers the Beatles for the first time.
I had knoppix running at the time. It was my first experience of a Live CD. which was cool as I could run it I'm sure it was a pentium 100 with 16meg and 800MB hdd. or maybe it was later on my Pentium II with 128Meg and 6.4GB Fireball!
Either way I used it a good few times to rescue data and generally fiddle with all sort of pcs from this era. (late 90's to early 2000')
Same. Back then we weren't booting off USB memory sticks: CDs it was. Knoppix and memtest to troubleshoot friends and family's PCs were my go-to tools. Always had a few bootable CD roms in the car. Heck I'd even take a HDD with me and wouldn't hesitate to open other people's PC and hook my "rescue HDD".
Worst memory ever troubleshooting a friend's PC was in the 386 or 486 days (didn't have Knoppix yet but was already on Slackware): he asked me to backup his files and I hooked one of my HDD as the main (as it was booting fine) and hooked my friend's HDD as a "slave" (that's how the terminology was back then). But I got sloppy and just let my friend's HDD sitting on the tower. Metallic PC tower. I turned the computer on, we heard an horrible noise and we saw a puff of smoke.
Old HDDs were kinda wild from that standpoint: much more exposed conductive parts than the later ones.
I just managed to short-circuit his HDD and it, nearly literally, went up in smoke. I was feeling really bad and gave him a HDD of mine. Oh well at least he had a working computer (but zero files of his).
The usual solution to bad controller boards was finding the same model drive and swapping boards at least temporarily to get data off.
Isn't this what eventually became Kali linux? I remember Knoppix and Whoppix then I didn't really check on the projects for a while then Kali came along
I remember using PHLAK (Professional Hackers Linux Assault Kit) that I'm pretty sure was based on Knoppix. I don't know if PHLAK actually had any pedigree heading into Kali, but Kali stepped up when PHLAK stopped.
I remember burning this on a CD as a preteen. It's what got me into Linux. It blew my mind that an OS could be live-loaded off a disk. Ever since then, I tried to daily drive linux, but came back to Windows again and again for gaming...until this year.
There was a Knoppix STD (security tools distro), I remember using that in the mid/early 00s.
That's such an unfortunate name for a good, reputable distro.
Kali was Backtrack before which was built on Whax which was based on Slackware.
I fondly remember Backtrack 2, running as a Live distro. I remember going to university labs where a teacher taught us a couple of techniques or so. Great days.