NEWS Interview: Klaus Knopper SEE OUR INTERVIEW Happy Birthday Knoppix 6.4 with Klaus Knopper on pg. 14 Ten Years On Ten is a fair age for a Linux distribution that doesn’t have massive staff resources to back it up. Klaus Knopper looks back with a sense of satisfaction after just having compiled version 6.4. As a tribute to the community, this version includes only free software. By Jan Kleinert hen the Knoppix 6.0 CD hit perimental paths that the managers of A list of new features among the 3,000 the repositories in 2009, commercial distributions wouldn’t software packages is extensive, with the users had many reactions: dream of taking. This endearing trait is Debian community continually provid- W “Back to the command not the only one: Klaus Knopper doesn’t ing updates and testing new features line?” “I always said Unix was an operat- see Knoppix as a separate distribution, that Knopper adds to each version. ing system for geeks.” “Help, my com- but as a Debian release optimized for Knoppix 6.4 is thus at the same level as puter’s talking to me!” What had hap- Live media (see the “Interview” box). the future Debian Squeeze, as a couple pened? Klaus Knopper had simply set of examples illustrate: the talking Adriane menu for visually Slot-In as a Mass • Kernel 2.6.36 in 32-bit compatibility impaired users [1] as the default boot Phenomenon mode will run with most Intel and menu, which confused the majority of Klaus Knopper’s modesty might be tech- AMD CPUs. sighted users. nically justified, but it does play down • The free Nouveau module for X.org, But this wasn’t a mistake on the part the importance of Knoppix. Because which supports accelerated 2D, 3D, of the then 40-year-old Austrian. The Re- Knopper’s project started to produce sta- and Compiz on various NVidia cards. lease Notes correctly documented that if ble results, whole generations of sys ad- • Modules for the Intel i915, Radeon and you pressed Enter in the boot menu, it mins, Linux consultants, and PC engi- Nouveau now all use Kernel Mode Set- launched the original graphical desktop neers have slotted Knoppix CDs and ting (see the “Knoppix with NVidia as the boot option. Knopper was being DVDs into their own and their custom- Cards” box). deliberately provocative: He wanted peo- ers’ computers. Knoppix celebrates its • Cloop 2.636 real-time block decom- ple with normal vision to experience tenth anniversary at the end of this year pression transparently unpacks the what it felt like using a computer with- – an amazing success considering the 4GB data archive on the DVD and out a GUI and possibly without a dis- vast numbers of Linux distributions some 9GB of software at run time. play, stirring up some interest in the available in the wild [4]. • Thanks to Knopper’s custom, opti- topic of accessibility at the same time. mized, Udev scripts, Knoppix identi- This anecdote shows that Knoppix [2] Knoppix 6.4 fies partitions and filesystems faster [3] isn’t a commercial distribution that To celebrate this anniversary, Knopper than previously at boot time. bows to the whims of the mainstream. published version 6.4 Knopper occasionally travels down ex- on his website. As a tribute to free software INFO and the community that backs it, the inventor of [1] Adriane: http:// knopper. net/ Knoppix has not in- knoppix-adriane/ index-en. html cluded any proprietary Develop. Deploy. Scale. [2] Knoppix: http:// knopper. net/ knoppix/ software for various index-en. html chipsets with this distri- Full root access on your own virtual server for as little as $19.95/mo [3] “Knoppix 6.3” by Klaus Knopper, Linux Magazine, April 2010, pg. 32 bution. You will not find a [4] Distrowatch: http:// distrowatch. com Flash Player, Adobe [5] Busch, Heather, and Burton Silver, Multiple Linux distributions to choose from • Web-based deployment • Five geographically Reader, or NVidia driv- Why Cats Paint: A Theory of Feline diverse data centers • Dedicated IP address • Premium bandwidth providers • 4 core SMP Xen ers, and Knopper re- Aesthetics. Ten Speed Press, 1994 instances • Out of band console access • Private back-end network for clustering • IP fail-over places Oracle’s Java [7] Chaoscope: support for high availability • Easily upgrade or add additional Linodes • Free managed DNS http:// www. chaoscope. org with OpenJDK, includ- Figure 1: Klaus Knopper was inspired to feature the fractal [8] Knoppix support: http:// knopper. net/ ing the Java plugin for wallpaper image in Knoppix 6.4 after meeting with Austrian kontakt/ index-en. php Firefox. math teachers. For more information visit www.linode.com or call us at 609-593-7103 12 FEBRUARY 2011 ISSUE 123 LINUX-MAGAZINE.COM | LINUXPROMAGAZINE.COM 012-014_knopper-interview.indd 12 14.12.2010 14:57:44 Uhr NEWS Interview: Klaus Knopper On very rare occasions, the following, The Chaoscope [7] program used to cal- have at least 5GB of free space to allow more radical, approach might be needed: culate the wallpaper may be a Windows for your own files and settings in the knoppix acpi=off noapic nolapic. For program, but it is free, will be released overlay filesystem. an extensive list of boot options, try the on the GPL at some point, and will run Like its predecessors, Knoppix 6.4 can KNOPPIX/knoppix-cheatcodes.txt file on perfectly with Wine on Linux, according be installed on disk. Surprisingly, the the DVD and the help texts, which you to Knopper. Knoppix installer is one of the fastest can display by pressing F2 and F3 at methods of installing Debian on a hard boot time. Knoppix on Flash Media disk because of its reduced feature set. Klaus also has added a couple of math Knoppix boots more quickly from a USB Beware of kernel updates, because the packages for teachers, for example (X) stick than from a DVD. Just as with 6.3, Knoppix kernel integrates hard disk and Maxima with links to TeXmacs, a USB image is easily created. The Install media support modules. The original De- GeoGebra, and Scilab. Inspired by math, KNOPPIX to flash disk in the Preferences bian kernel still uses an initial ramdisk. Knopper also chose the fractal “fish” as section helps (Figure 2). The stick with a Then again, the kernel doesn’t normally the wallpaper for version 6.4 (Figure 1). primary FAT partition should be 8GB or update automatically. ■■■ KNOPPIX WITH NVIDIA CARDS Knopper had to sacrifice the framebuffer compensate for this, the Compiz 3D desk- console for graphics modules with Kernel top now works with the Nouveau driver. Mode Setting. This means that, with the If users with more exotic NVidia cards see Nouveau driver in particular, NVidia card a black or broken display after booting, users can’t access the text console from they can enter the following options one X11. When you press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to toggle, after another at the boot prompt: the GUI screen just stays put, but not the knoppix xmodule=nouveau computer, although it might look that way. knoppix xmodule=nv Ctrl+Alt+F5 takes you back to X. Because Figure 2: Knoppix boots most quickly from a knoppix xmodule=vesa Framebuffer is missing, you also shut USB stick. An additional tool guides users down your computer in the dark. But to fb1280x1024 through the process of creating one. Develop. Deploy. Scale. Full root access on your own virtual server for as little as $19.95/mo Multiple Linux distributions to choose from • Web-based deployment • Five geographically diverse data centers • Dedicated IP address • Premium bandwidth providers • 4 core SMP Xen instances • Out of band console access • Private back-end network for clustering • IP fail-over support for high availability • Easily upgrade or add additional Linodes • Free managed DNS For more information visit www.linode.com or call us at 609-593-7103 LINUX-MAGAZINE.COM | LINUXPROMAGAZINE.COM ISSUE 123 FEBRUARY 2011 13 012-014_knopper-interview.indd 13 14.12.2010 14:57:45 Uhr Interview with Klaus Knopper Knoppix inventor Klaus Knopper was born in with fewer new features but also with fewer was based on Red Hat before I moved to De- 1968 and earned an electrical engineering de- bugs. bian in 2001. gree from Kaiserslautern University of Tech- LM: Did you start off on your own? How LM: One of your special concerns seems to nology. We talked to Klaus about the major many people now work on Knoppix apart be improving the accessibility of Linux for differences between developing a distribu- from you? users with visual impairments. tion 10 years ago and now, his relationship KK: In the first few years, I still had a relatively KK: Computers can be a very practical and with Debian, and his cats’ artistic ambitions. large amount of time for experimenting and easy-to-use tool for people with special vi- Linux Magazine: Klaus, what made you de- developing new features. Because of the un- sion needs, assuming they come with the cided to cook your own distribution back believable number of new concepts and sys- right kind of software and user interface – then? tems, this is no longer something a solitary and this doesn’t necessarily mean a GUI. I Klaus Knopper: Originally, Knoppix was just person can do in their leisure time. I am very was aware of this before I met Adriane, but it a big experiment intended as a learning tool happy that a couple of developer friends are was hard to convince her that the computer for myself – I just wanted to get to know the there to help me test and bugfix.