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KNOPPIX 6.7.0 / ADRIANE 1.4 - Live CD / DVD

General information about Microknoppix

"Microknoppix" is a complete rewrite of the KNOPPIX boot system from version 6.0 and up, with the following features:

1. High compatibility with its Debian base: Aside from configuration files, nothing gets changed in Debians standard installation.
2. Accellerated boot procedure: Independently from the usual SysV bootscripts, multiple tasks of system initialization are run in parallel, so that interactive desktops are reached very fast.
3. LXDE is used as graphical environment, which is a very slim and fast desktop with extremely short starttime and low resource requirements. Because of its GTK2 base, LXDE works together nicely with screenreader Orca.
4. Amount of installed software has been greatly reduced in the CD-version, so that custom remasters based on CD are possible again. On the DVD edition, KDE4 and Gnome with many applications originating from these popular desktops are available.
5. Network configuration is being handled by NetworkManager with nm-applet in graphics mode, and textual GUIs in textmode (compatible to Debians /etc/network/interfaces specification).
6. A persistent image for saving personal settings and additionally installed programs, KNOPPIX/knoppix-data.img, is supported on the boot device, optionally encrypted with AES/256bit. In general, installation as live system on flash disk is recommended.

New about the 6.7 version

• Version 6.7 has been updated from Debian/squeeze with the usual picks from Debian "testing" and "unstable", and uses Kernel 2.6.39.3 and xorg 7.6 for supporting currentmost computer hardware.
  -> software list CD...
  -> software list DVD...
• experimental free Nouveau graphics modules supporting NVidia cards, acellerated graphics via kernel mode settings (KMS),
• OpenOffice -> LibreOffice 3.3.3,
• Chromium 12.0.742.112 Web Browser,
• Optional 64-bit Kernel via boot option "knoppix64", supporting systems with more than 4GB of RAM and chroot to 64-bit installations for system rescue tasks (DVD version only).
• New boot option (example) "bootfrom=/dev/sda1/knoppix-test.iso", for mounting the Knoppix compressed file system from a stored iso file directly.
• Boot option "grub", for starting a bootloader shell in system rescue tasks.
• ADRIANE: Updated to version 1.4 of the non-visual desktop framework, now using cuneiform as engine for text recognition of scanned texts, enhanced support for several cellphone models via gammu (SMS function).

More notes

• Chromium 12.x as default browser (additionally Firefox/Iceweasel 5.0 on the DVD edition): The open source version of the well known "webkit" based browser is especially useful for small displays and tablets, and very quick in page rendering. In Knoppix, for (maybe exaggerated?) security considerations, active contents and plugins are disabled by default. This can be changed with a mouseclick - per-page in the browsers address bar, and in general in the browsers settings. Because of its proprietary license, there is no "flash plugin" installed in the freely distributable version of Knoppix, but interested individuals can download and install flash easily using the "Settings" -> "Install additional software" menu entry.
• Because installed programs (especially Libreoffice) tend to grow in size with each new version, sadly, we had to remove some packages from the small CD edition in order to still fit within 700MB. These are the kernel headers (which are still present on the DVD edition for compiling third-party kernel modules), the graphical mail client icedove, the game frozen bubble, and some development libraries.

Known bugs in version 6.7.0

• ADRIANE desktop: The keyboard screenreader-navigation via CAPSLOCK key (kbdsniffd) does not start, since the uinput device is now located at a different place in the new kernel/udev.
  Workaround: Change the line uinput=uinput
  in /etc/kbdsniffd.conf to:
  uinput=../uinput
  Afterwards, restart the screen reader: sudo /etc/init.d/adriane-screenreader restart
  Also, the graphical screenreader orca does not detect an eventually installed braille device, which can be fixed by
  sudo ln /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/orca/brlapi.py /usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/orca/
  before starting the graphical desktop variant in ADRIANE.
  Both problems have been fixed in the ADRIANE CD variant from 7th August 2011. Thanks to Halim Sahin for the quick feedback!

ADRIANE

A.D.R.I.A.N.E. (Audio Desktop Reference Implementation And Networking Environment) is a talking menu system, which is supposed to make work and internet access easier for computer beginners, even if they have no sight contact to the computers monitor. A graphical environment with also talking programs and arbitrary magnification using compiz-fusion, is another option.

CD / DVD / USB Versions - which files do I need?

The current public beta release of KNOPPIX 6.7.0 CD and DVD is available in different variants for download at the Knoppix-Mirrors.

For burning a CD or DVD, only one single .iso file matching your language and version choice, is sufficient.

Additionally, several independent vendors offer readily burned and verified CDs, DVDs and USB-memorysticks saent out via postal service.

Since there are so many different media capacities, there is no readymade image for booting off memorystick available for download. But it is easy to create a bootable USB-stick or flashcard from a running Knoppix system, as described in the next section.

Booting from Flash

In order to create a bootable USB-medium (memory flashdisk, SD-card, digital camera with USB connector, cellphone with microSD, ...), the program flash-knoppix can be started from a running Knoppix system. This program installs all needed Knoppix files onto the FAT-formatted flashdisk, and creates a boot record for it. Other files on the medium stay intact, since no repartitioning or formatting is done by flash-knoppix.

After having copied the system to flash, using the persistent Knoppix image (overlay feature), it is possible to also store files permanently in live mode. That way, personal settings and additionally installed programs survive a reboot.

Boot options and controls

Overview of the most important functions. A complete description and listing of shortcuts can be found in the configurations of sbl, orca and compiz-fusion.

adriane     Start ADRIANE with talking text desktop

knoppix     Start KNOPPIX with graphical environment

knoppix64   Same as above, with 64-bit kernel (DVD version only)

knoppix/adriane acpi=off noapic nolapic pci=bios ...
            problem solvers, if computer doesn't start

knoppix testcd  Check CD for errors

knoppix tohd=/dev/hda1    Copy CD content to harddisk
            (hda1 or sda1, 1st partition on 1st IDE/SATA harddisk)
	    and start from there (free CD-rom drive)

knoppix toram             Load CD content to memory and start
            from there (free CD-rom drive)

CapsLock + space              read current line
CapsLock + arrow up           read previous line
CapsLock + arrow down         read next line
CapsLock + pageup             read from beginning of page to current position
CapsLock + pagedown           read from here to end of page
CapsLock + arrow left/right   spell charwise

Super + mouse wheel                 Set/scale magnification
Super + l                           Lock or release magnification area
Super + m                           small mouse lens
mouse to upper right corner         window overview
CapsLock + space                    start orca preferences

Super = penguin- or "window"-key left

Micro-Remastering

Boot options like "adriane" can easily be preset by changing syslinux.cfg after having copied the CD to a bootable memorystick using "flash-knoppix":

for automatically starting ADRIANE on boot. This is already default in all ADRIANE iso files.

Download

KNOPPIX 6.7.0 / ADRIANE 1.4 beta is available for download from the usual KNOPPIX mirror sites.

Download