Sebastopol, CA--Rather than opt for the expense of a laptop and the additional worry of losing or damaging it, Klaus Knopper, creator of Knoppix, made a bootable Linux CD distribution so he could take his favorite open source tools with him wherever he needed to work. CD in hand, he was able to go from computer to computer and get right to work with an operating system and environment that were familiar to him, without the need to install software on every computer he encountered. Over the years, he improved hardware support for Knoppix until it was able to recognize and automatically configure much of the hardware with which it came into contact. Knoppix caught on quickly with those who tried it. Its secret was simple: it got the job done.
Several years and many improvements later, Knoppix is still getting the job done. "There are a lot of live CDs out there these days," says Kyle Rankin, author of the newly released Knoppix Hacks, Second Edition (O'Reilly, US $34.99). "But I believe that Knoppix, especially with all of its current features, is still the best all-around live CD."
In the new edition of his book, Rankin shows readers how to fully use all of the major features of the latest versions of Knoppix, including remastering. "It's been some years since I wrote the initial 'Knoppix Hacks' book," notes Rankin. "Since then, Knoppix has had a number of advances, most specifically in the addition of UnionFS (now AuFS) which allowed a user to 'write' to the live CD just like it was a hard drive while it was booted. This alone opened up a whole new world of uses for Knoppix and made some hacks already in the book even easier."
Knoppix Hacks offers a collection of tips and techniques for using the enormous amount of software Knoppix offers--not just to work and play, but also to troubleshoot, repair, upgrade, and disinfect your system without having to install a thing. The book includes scores of hacks covering both the standard Knoppix live CD and the feature-rich DVD "Maxi" distribution (included with this book). Readers will learn how to:
- Investigate features of the KDE desktop and its Internet applications
- Save settings and data between reboots with persistent storagea
- Use Knoppix as a system administration multitool to replace failed servers and more
- Use the CD/DVD as a rescue disc to repair filesystems or a system that won't boot
- Rescue Windows systems with Knoppix to back up files and settings, hack the registry, and more
- Explore other live CDs based on Knoppix
- Use Knoppix to automatically detect and configure hardware
- Remaster Knoppix to include favorite software and custom branding
Kyle Rankin is a system administrator for Quinstreet, Inc., the current president of the North Bay Linux Users Group, and the author of Knoppix Hacks, Knoppix Pocket Reference and the upcoming Linux Multimedia Hacks. Kyle has been using Linux in one form or another since early 1998. In his free time he does pretty much the same thing he does at work--works with Linux.
More information about the book, including table of contents, index, author bio, and samples
Knoppix Hacks, Second Edition
Kyle Rankin
ISBN: 0-596-51493-X, $34.99 US, ?21.99
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