[ Thanks to Ladislav Bodnar for this
link. ]
“Knoppix has taken the Linux world by storm. Barely known
outside its borders only a few months ago, it has suddenly become
the focus of Linux media as a great way of introducing anyone to
Linux. Unlike other distributions, Knoppix does not need to be
installed on a computer’s hard disk–it runs directly from the CD.
All you need to do is to place it into your CD-ROM drive and
restart the computer. A few minutes later you will have a fully
working Linux workstation with all major desktop environments,
server software, multimedia, office and productivity applications
you can think of…“The idea of a complete OS running from a bootable CD is
not a new one. Apple used to supply such a disk with its OS prior
to MacOS X and Linux has had DemoLinux, SuSE Live-Eval and
CoolLinux, just to name a few. What made you create another one and
what differentiates Knoppix from other similar
products?“I wanted to learn how bootable CDs work and once a base system
was running, I added stuff that I needed for my personal use, like
hardware auto-detection and automatic start-up of a pre-configured
desktop. When you are teaching computer classes, the PCs for
students are not always installed in the way you need it. So,
having a bootable CD with me with a complete installation, made a
lot of things easier. Also, considering the fact that notebooks can
get stolen or broken easily, carrying a bootable CD around is way
less of an effort…”