New in version 7.0.4

First of all, a round of apologies for not even having announced version 7.0.3 yet. Other projects just consumed a lot of time and pending (small) bugfixes had to make it into another new release. You know, as for most community projects: "it's ready, when it is." ;-)

• Version 7.0.4 of Knoppix is based on the usual picks from Debian stable (squeeze) and newer Desktop packages from Debian/testing and Debian/unstable (wheezy). It uses kernel 3.4.9 and xorg 7.7 (core 1.12.3) for supporting current computer hardware.
  
• 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).
• Bugfix update for 7.0.3: The apt database now contains all necessary data also in the CD version in order to directly install software via synaptic.
• Support for ExFAT-fuse
• repaired gprsconnect and modemlink
• oprofile support
• LibreOffice 3.5.4,
• Chromium 21.0.1180.75 and Firefox/Iceweasel 10.0.6 Web Browser,
• LXDE (Default) with filemanager PCMANFM 1.0, KDE 4.7.4 (boot option knoppix desktop=kde, DVD version only), GNOME 3.4 (boot option knoppix desktop=gnome, DVD version only).
• ADRIANE: Version 1.4 of the audio desktop for blind computer users with improved support for somd braille devices.
• Viacam for controlling the mouse cursor by movement of head or hand using the builtin webcam.
• Wine version 1.5.10 for integration of Windows (TM) based programs.
• Virtualbox version 4.1.18 (DVD version only) and qemu-kvm 1.0 for (para-)virtualization.
• zram "RAM-Compression", especially useful for older computers with low ram: Up to 75% of main memory will be compressed if running out of ram. This way, it is possible to start large programs without needing a swap area on disk. With this feature, the system can use up to twice as much "virtual" ram (for averagely compressible data).

-> complete software list DVD (over 3000 software packages, total of 9GB uncompressed size, cloop-compressed to 4GB).

Most of the work for 7.0 has gone into some internal changes that are almost invisible:

• The standard character set has been moved to UTF8 for (almost) all languages, for supporting multilingual parts, umlauts and special characters in texs and applications. Some GTK programs had problems with the language-specific ISO character set and even refused to start, which should be fixed by the switch to UTF8, which almost all Linux distributions recommend. Because of the change, many of Knoppix scripts had to be changed and in many cases, Xdialog was replaced by zenity.
• The Knoppix-specific boot system was changed in order to first detect and initialize hardware needed for starting the interactive user interface, delaying other initialization tasks. Because of this, the system "feels" like starting mich quicker, and the desktop is reached earlier, especially when starting from flash disk, yet other services like printer and network are just started a little later.

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.

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. If desired, the target medium can be partitioned and fornatted, or left in its inistal state, so that existing files stay intact.

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.

Availability

KNOPPIX 7.0.4 / ADRIANE 1.4 beta is available for download from the usual KNOPPIX mirror sites and via Bittorrent.