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| 16th May 2004 | KNOPPIX 3.4 |
Brian Grainger |
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Since the Consumer Electronics Show, in Hamburg at the end of March, there has been high excitement in the Knoppix world. At the show, a preview release of the next version of Knoppix, version 3.4, was made available. At the time, the full release version was said to be a couple of weeks away. Unfortunately, it always seemed to be a couple of weeks away and the Knoppix community got restless. This was the version to include the new Linux 2.6 kernel and the ability to write to NTFS file partitions, so it was eagerly awaited. The tone of some of the pleas on the forums steadily got less friendly. Klaus Knopper, the co-ordinator of Knoppix, always said it would be ready when it was ready, but the never ending couple of weeks did get tedious. During April it was announced that there was a problem making everything fit on the CD. The new kernel and Open Office 1.1.1 had meant that 700MB was not enough for everything. A request was put on the forums for readers to suggest what could go! Did that create some traffic! A pretty stupid idea really, since everyone wanted to keep what they used and reject what they didn't. Me, I just sat and waited, although I was in broad agreement with the main thrust of opinion. Because Open Office was essential, as the lure to Microsoft Office users, it was not necessary to include the other office package KOffice. Of course, those who used KOffice did not agree. The second major casualty was Latex. Most of my readers probably do not know what that is, but to those in the Latex community it was bad news of course. Towards the very end of April, Klaus told one pleader (!) to look on the mirrors at the weekend (of our May Bank Holiday). So it was that on 4th May 2004, Knoppix 3.4 was released to the world. I came back to work after the holiday and the forums were all full of requests for mirrors where the download would come at a reasonable speed. Everybody was trying to get a copy, with the result that the downloads were slow. Soon after, the queries / bug reports started. I was patient and just read the reports to see what possible issues there might be. Actually, most issues were not bugs, but lack of understanding. Knoppix 3.4 uses a new way of booting up from version 3.3 so this inevitably caused some problems. In addition, the new kernel created some glitches with SCSI. On May 10th a minor update was released. Having read the forums for a week, with no real new issues coming up I was getting ready to e-mail my source of Knoppix to tell them to get the new release downloaded and make it available. I did not have to do so. On Wednesday 12th May Linux Emporium announced that Knoppix 3.4, 10th May edition, was available. I rang on the Thursday and it was on my mat the following morning. Unfortunately, like most of the country now, I do not get my mail now before I go to work, so a test of the new system had to wait. My main concern was whether I could create boot floppies. Although my PC will boot from CD, I like to copy the CD Knoppix file onto a hard drive and boot from a floppy. It makes life simpler that way and slightly faster. The new boot method had meant that creating a boot floppy was a bit of a problem, which was not resolved in the 4th May version. However, having obtained a few workaround solutions from the forums over the week I found I had wasted my time. The 10th May version included a means of creating a 2-disk boot floppy set and it worked. Knoppix 3.4 was go! How does 3.4 vary from the last release of 3.3? I've already mentioned that the Linux kernel had gone to 2.6.5 so all the advantages of the new kernel were available. In fact this is an option. Kernel 2.4.26 is still there and is the default. This is quite a good idea because if you have problems with 2.6 you can go back. I have found that 2.6 runs a lot slower on my home PC - perhaps because it is ancient (circa 1999) - so I use the default kernel. I have also mentioned that Knoppix now uses the isolinux boot method, rather than the syslinux method. Before you ask, I do not know what it means either! The captive NTFS installer is available. After this driver is installed it is possible to write to NTFS partitions, if you are brave! This means that Windows XP users can transfer files from Knoppix to Windows without difficulty. As well as the Linux kernel being updated, new releases of KDE (3.2.2), GIMP (2.0) and Open Office Org (1.1.1) have been included. For some reason both German and English versions of OOO are included. This was a talking point when lack of space was mentioned but it is clearly simpler to Klaus to include both so that's the way it is. Most packages have had updates done to them. These are the major changes. New and updated device drivers have been added, as well as even more improved hardware detection capability. Knoppix is famed for its quality of hardware detection - better than some commercial distros. Some new utility tools have been added: All in all, this is a significant release. The question is - does it work? I think the praise for Klaus and his team that is appearing on the forums tells its own story. When I ran my own test I found that although I hated the new splash screen, because it advertised the June Linux Tag show in Germany, I liked just about everything else. The K menu organisation, although only slightly changed, seems more intuitive now. I can find those apps. I could even see that the Partition editor was there - something I never knew existed in the old version, until it was mentioned on the forums. I managed to get my sound card to work this time, although the volume is a bit muted compared to Windows drivers. Open Office still loads in about the same time - slow on my machine but I know it is much quicker on newer hardware. I guess the one thing I am constantly amazed about in Knoppix, is the amount of software, all free, that goes with it. Having finally mastered the Konquerer browser to look at my hard drive it was amazing to click on files and find they just work, because the necessary software was there! Click an MP3 - it plays. All this occurs without any installation, pennies spent to get the software or messing up my Windows installation. When I looked at the list of packages in the latest Knoppix it came to 1246 in number. OK, so a lot of this is packages called up by other packages and is hidden to the user. Nevertheless, there is a heck of a lot of something. As the saying goes - Knoppix Rocks! The problems? Just the usual one of having simple instructions available for Knoppix knewbies. There are some tasks that need spelling out - if new users are not to get disheartened. The answers are available, but you cannot expect knewbies to go trawling the forums to find them. Even when you do find the answers they sometimes need some interpretation. I am going to have to do something about this. I would like to create some Knoppix CDs and simply hand them out, with simple instructions, so that other Windows users can have the Knoppix experience. They would be surprised at just how good it is and that, as the other saying goes: In a world without borders, who needs Windows and Gates. |
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