I know that it is a live CD (or DVD) distro. I know it actually works on my computer (made out of the bits my children discarded). I know it is the son of Debian and the father of DSL (and even some sort of relation to Knoppix64). I know that it is good for re-glazing broken Windows. I know Klaus Knopper is a great guy and deserves much praise.

But what I really want to know is what Klaus Knopper has done with Debian to make this a unique distribution (apart from the obvious changes to compress the files and make it run from the CD). Is any of the software his own or has he just carefully selected existing programs?

I have tried to install it on hard disk, it worked fine but lost some of its Knoppixness and let its Debian origins show. I did not have much luck installing a Debian distro but then I am a newbie and luck is a significant factor.

It does seem to be a remarkably versatile product: live CD, hard disk install, can be reduced to fit a credit card, and can be enhanced to run on a 64bit AMD.

He and others have added a lot of scripts that take care of the booting and hardware detection things like that, I would suggest some reading at http://www.knoppix.net/forum/ and since I got an email today saying the mailing list problem has been sorted you may want to go to http://www.linuxtag.org/wws/lists and ask this question on the list.

Well, ask a Debian developer and they are going to tell you that ... well, we'll leave that.

Anyways, Knoppix is a mixture of Debian stable, unstable, testing and self made (I guess by Klaus Knopper) packages. Which in actuality break the whole apt repositry. So, as long as you only install Knoppix and do not add any further packages with apt, you are fine.

Knoppix is Knoppix, and it is based on Debian but not compatible (anymore).

HTH
Klaus

Now that is so full of bull it is not funny. The packages come straight from the archives with an exception of a modified sysvinit which you can remove with little effort on your part, the mount-aes but again it will be removed when you upgrade the sysvinit and some of the scripts that are still used after install as well as of course things like mplayer and java which are not part of the archives to start with. It can be upgraded with very little trouble as long as you know the system but if you are a beginner at it then you can run into problems but they are solvable with a little searching and reading. Now is it a good idea to use as your dirsto forever probably not but I used it quite successfully for over a year on my nephews computer and it worked fine, upgraded without problems other than the normal ones you experience with the Debian archives using such a mix of packages. It is a great little system to use and learn Debian before moving on to a full install because you can basically do anything you want, you can totally destroy the system then be back up and running in 20 minutes while at the same time having learned some useful lessons you would not want to on a "real" install that you cared about.

Excately!
I did not say that Knoppix was a bad idea. All I said is that it contains stable, unstable and testing packages as well as custom build ones (which you also admit). So...Knoppix is therefore not Debian, the apt repository is broken. Nothing more, nothing less.

Knoppix is a great tool. Don't get me wrong. I use it often to boot and fix broken PCs. I can not imagine a world without Knoppix. But Knoppix is not Debian!

regards
Klaus

A couple of packages do not equal broken repository apt still works and nobody said Knoppix was Debian. For the most part it works just like my system now that has testing/unstable with a few packages from experimental when I want them, you run into the same problems using both because you have the same sources for the packages. Have you ever even used a mixed Debian system to know what you are talking about here?