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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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).
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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).
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).
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.
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.
I'm pretty sure that if I manage to find that HDD, it will boot today.
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')
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).
I first thought there was something new about it
Haven't used it in many years however, since most distro installers now boot a "live" linux so I just use that.
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.
My first Knoppix CD may have actually come by way of the front cover of Linux Magazine.
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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).