The IceWM "Start Button" is just a way to bring up the Menu.
In Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux, just right click anywhere on the desktop to bring up the Menu.
Then navigate the Menu as usual. If you decide not to select anything and want the Menu to go away, then left click on the desktop
away from the menu. Enjoy exploring your new system.
The IceWM window manager was chosen for
Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux over the Knoppix default window manager KDE, as IceWM uses less system resources, and
will boot to the desktop faster than KDE on older computers. Also, IceWM is designed to look like Windows 95, presenting a familiar
interface to the Linux system.
There are no desktop icons in IceWM, just right click on the desktop to bring up the Menu. Also, many programs have quick launch icons on the task bar.
An extensive Admin-Tools submenu is provided, right click on the desktop:
Menu -> Admin-Tools.
A double-height task bar is now standard in IceWM, with autohide.
The task bar, with the Start Button, autohides at the bottom of the screen.
Move your mouse cursor to the bottom of the screen to bring up the task bar.
The task bar has buttons to launch applications, a pager to change the workspace displayed, cpu and network
monitors, clock, window list menu, and a show desktop button. Also, the bottom row of the task bar will show
buttons for the applications running on all workspaces. Click once to bring the application to the screen, click again to
hide.
Dial-up users will want to review the Connecting To The Net section to see how the taskbar "network monitor" benefits them.
Many of the commonly-used programs have color-coded quick-start buttons on the task bar.
Hover your mouse cursor over a button, and a tooltip describing the button will appear.
Click once on a button to start the application.
Those marked "Confirmation required" (see list below) have Yes/No startup confirmation dialog boxes that will appear when the button is clicked.
Here are the buttons on the top row of the task bar, from left to right:
You may also use the menu to switch window managers,
Menu -> Admin Tools -> Choose/Restart KNOPPIX desktop.
Click on the radio button for Fluxbox, or KDE.
Additional Notes concerning the menus:
More interesting features: Fluxbox and IceWM window managers:
Tip: Any window opened in Fluxbox or IceWM that you cannot reach the title-bar to move the window, just press the "Alt" key, and move the window
by holding down the left mouse button, and dragging the window around on the desktop. You may also use the mouse to "grab" the
right or left side of the window, and then drag the window to allow access to the title-bar.
With most of the mouse cursor themes, a "cross" will appear when you can move the window.
Do I need to change the firewall settings?
No, if all you need to do is surf the web using the web browsers, and send and receive e-mail.
The firewall is preconfigured to allow web surfing and e-mail.
When the system boots, the firewall will be activated with those protocols allowed, and all others blocked.
You need to run the Guarddog configuration (setup interface) only if you need to change the protocol settings, or if you want to disable the firewall temporarily:
(Click on Advanced tab to find the "Disable firewall" checkbox.)
(To use the dial-up section of internet radio stations in the "Station Selector for XMMS", the user is advised to disable the firewall to connect to these stations successfully.)
There are menu entries for the guarddog configuration interface in IceWM and Fluxbox.
Also, for KDE, there is a desktop icon for guarddog.
All of these run guarddog as root, so the firewall settings can be changed.
If you change any of the protocol settings, you can restore them when you boot up your linux system
if you have a saved personal configuration, and that is restored at the boot prompt:
An example - > boot: knoppix myconfig=scan
If your personal configuration is saved and restored each time you boot up the system, then the
firewall will only have to be set up one time, and can be restored and activated as the system boots.
The Guarddog firewall configuation application would only have to be run if there are changes.
With a livecd linux, a custom firewall configuration can be used with a saved personal configuration, as noted above.
Without restoring a personal configuration, the user must configure the firewall each time the linux CD is booted if special protocols are required, other than the ones provided by default.
Here is an example of how to allow protocols:
(These are the default protocols, that are already set up for you.)
1. Open the Guarddog Firewall application, found in the Admin-Tools section of the IceWM menu.
2. Open the "Protocols" tab, and open the "File Transfer" section.
3. Click on "FTP", "HTTP" and "HTTPS"
4. Open the "Network" section.
5. Click on "DNS"
6. Open the "Mail" section.
7. Click on "POP3", "POP3S", and "SMTP"
6. Click on "Apply", then on the dialog boxes: "Continue", and "OK" to start the firewall.
7. Click on "OK" on the Guarddog interface to close the application.
These examples show how protocols are enabled for your firewall.
You will find that these are already checked for you, as part of the default configuration provided.
All other protocols are blocked by default.
In Review:
If you have other protocols that you need to allow, you will have to save your configuration so the firewall will start automatically
with your additional protocols allowed the next time you boot up the linux system with the "myconfig=scan" knoppix cheatcode.
Saving your configuration is not necessary for firewall purposes if you do not need to change the default protocols that are allowed in the following list:
If you have broadband and have a router that assigns your IP via dhcp, then you may already be on the net without having to configure anything.
If your computer has been using a Cable Modem, you will already be connected when you boot up the livecd linux.
New in Beta 105 is the Broadband/Network Connection Control interface that can be kept on the desktop:
In IceWM:
Menu -> Internet -> Broadband -> Control.
Although designed for use with a cable modem, will shut down or reconnect any network connection as required.
In IceWM, there is a network monitor box on the top row of the taskbar, next to the CPU monitor, to the right of the red [H] button.
The network monitor box only appears if you are connected, either with broadband or dialup.
Using dialup, this box will disappear if the dialup connection is ended or fails.
Using broadband, if you disconnect using the Broadband Control, the box will remain, but will now show any current network activity, until you reconnect.
Hover your mouse cursor over the network monitor to see information about the active connection in a tooltip.
Dial-up users will appreciate the network box on the IceWM task bar.
You can hover your mouse cursor over the network box and see the connection details, as well as view the connection activity in the box as it occurs.
If your Dial-up connection fails, or you have terminated it, then the network box will be gone, and no connection to the internet is possible.
If you are surfing the web, and have difficulty connecting to a web site, immediately check to see if the network box is there.
If not, reconnect, and wait until the network box reappears on the taskbar before going to a web site.
Also, if your connection fails, the WvDial connection window will also be gone.
To start up the "Internet Dialer Interface for WvDial", use the IceWM toolbar icon, "Dial-Up/Broadband Selector" and click the "dial-up" button.
If you have a dialup modem use WvDial next:
You may manually prepare your WvDial configuration without using the "Setup Interface for WvDial" using these instructions:
In an Xterm terminal (root shell):
(The Xterm terminal is the "root shell" on the taskbar in IceWM.)
# wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf
If the wvdialconf program finds a modem, then you will need to edit the /etc/wvdial.conf file that is generated to reflect your ISP's phone number, your username and password.
Use the SciTE editor to do that, like this:
# scite /etc/wvdial.conf
(in the root shell)
Save your wvdial.conf, close SciTE, and you should now be able to connect to the Internet using the dialer in the menu (Menu ->Dialer ->Dial.), or in your root terminal,
# wvdial
Using the "Internet Dialer Interface for Wvdial":
(accessed via the "Dial-Up/Broadband Selector" icon on the IceWM Toolbar)
You may "dial" and "hangup" your dial-up internet connection with this interface, rather than use the menu in Fluxbox or IceWM.
(Menu -> Internet -> Dialer -> Dial or Hangup)
The Selector icon is next to Mozilla Thunderbird E-Mail, on the left hand side of the IceWM toolbar.
To access the interface in the Fluxbox window manager:
Menu -> Internet -> Dialer -> WvDial.
The "Internet Dialer Interface for Wvdial" can be kept open, useful for frequent connect/disconnect requirements for your dial-up internet access.
For first-time users, there is a help button on the interface, which will open this section of the Getting Started Guide.
There is also a "Setup" button, which will open the "Setup Interface for WvDial", to allow you to configure WvDial for your modem and dial-up
Internet Service Provider as detailed above.
The Setup Interface is also available in the IceWM and Fluxbox menus, in the Admin-Tools section.
Menu -> Admin-Tools -> WvDial Setup
When using the "Internet Dialer Interface for Wvdial": to connect, the WvDial connection terminal window will appear just below the interface,
to show the dial-up connection process.
Tips on use:
Right Click on the Titlebar of the Internet Dialer Interface for Wvdial, and select Layer -> On Top.
Then, you may "roll up" the Interface window, and position it on your desktop, near the top of your web browser, where it can be "rolled down" for
convenient use, for frequent "dial" and "hangup" operations.
A simpler way to handle the Interface in IceWM:
Just click on the "dialer.tcl" box on the lower IceWM taskbar, to restore the Interface window to the desktop, on top of your web browser.
Clicking the "dialer.tcl" box again, will hide the Interface.
In IceWM you will see a small box appear on the right side of the upper IceWM taskbar near the red [H] button when the connection is ready for use, after you have clicked the "Dial" button.
When using dial-up, you can see a colored representation of current network activity in this box. Upload will appear in yellow, at the top of the box, and any
download activity will appear as green along the bottom of the box. The activity display will move from right to left within the box.
This network activity box will already be present if you are connected with broadband.
The upload and download colors are the same for broadband access.
New for Beta 99:
Further improvements for security reasons are made to the Internet Dialer Interface for WvDial, and the Station Selector for XMMS.
The "Hangup" button in both applications will now remove the /etc/ppp/pap-secrets, chap-secrets, and resolv.conf files.
Removing these files removes the ISP username, password and DNS IP address from the system on hangup (disconnect).
The files are automatically recreated for use by the system when the user connects to the ISP with the Dial button.
Any restored or newly created WvDial /etc/wvdial.conf file is allowed to remain in the system, for use when reconnecting to the ISP with the "Dial" button.
Since Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux has the Mozilla Firefox web browser with a built-in Start Page, click on any link to get started.
Menu ->Internet -> Mozilla Firefox.
Or, you may click on the taskbar icon (in IceWM) for Mozilla Firefox.
In both Mozilla Firefox and Opera 9 there is a built-in start (home) page for your use, with over 80 popular web site links.
(These four web browsers are included in this remaster)
KDE provides the Konqueror web browser, also included.
This document is being displayed in Dillo.
You can use Dillo to surf the web:
In IceWM, Menu -> Internet -> Dillo
Dillo will start with the built in web page, click on any link to go there.
Dillo is suitable for older computers, using less system resources than the other browsers.
As of Beta 83A, Dillo has been upgraded to version 0.8.3-1
This version of Dillo has the html "bug meter", used to verify web page html, providing a line-by-line report of any errors found.
What about the other web browsers in the menu?
There are two text web browsers in the menu that you will want to try:
These may be used as file and directory browsers if you start linux with the "knoppix 2" cheatcode,
which will not start your graphical environment, known as "X".
If you have a connection to the internet, they will surf the web in run level 2.
Navigate these with the arrow keys, space bar, and in the case of Elinks, the mouse also.
l. Menu -> Internet -> Lynx.
From the Lynx Users Guide:
Lynx is a fully-featured World Wide Web (WWW) client for users running
cursor-addressable, character-cell display devices (e.g., vt100
terminals, vt100 emulators running on PCs or Macs, or any other
character-cell display). It will display Hypertext Markup Language
(HTML) documents containing links to files on the local system, as
well as files on remote systems running http, gopher, ftp, wais, nntp,
finger, or cso/ph/qi servers, and services accessible via logins to
telnet, tn3270 or rlogin accounts (see URL Schemes Supported by Lynx).
Current versions of Lynx run on Unix, VMS, Windows3.x/9x/NT, 386DOS
and OS/2 EMX.
If you have an active internet connection, simply hit the "G" key on your keyboard,
and enter the url of the web page that you want to visit in Lynx.
2. Menu -> Internet -> Elinks.
The Elinks browser asks for the URL first, unlike Lynx, that gives you a users manual and other information in the first screen.
Enter a web address, and if you have a connection to the internet, the page will be quickly downloaded and displayed as text.
Elinks is fast, and you may use the mouse to click on the various links in a web page.
Use the left arrow key to return to the previous screen.
One advantage to using Elinks is that the web pages are presented more or less like they would be in a graphical web browser, but without the images.
Mozilla Firefox:
Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux adds Mozilla Firefox, not included in the base Knoppix Linux v. 3.4
For Beta 101, the NoScript extension has been added to Mozilla Firefox. This is security add-on, allowing only trusted sites to be placed on a whitelist.
You may, however use either Mozilla Firefox, Flock, or Opera as your general-purpose web browsers.
In this remaster, Opera and Firefox come with a number of RSS news feeds, the Flock browser does not have the additional RSS feeds, to allow as less-complicated web browsing experience.
The built-in home page "web.html" is not fetched from the internet, so it is viewable without a web connection.
If you have an active connection to the internet, you may click on any link to begin surfing the web.
All of the web browsers will open this page when they start up.
Near the bottom of the page there is a search area, with several popular internet search engines.
Enter your keyword(s) in any of them to use.
New in Beta 81C is the Google Safe Search area.
In the bookmarks toolbar Mozilla Firefox has several RSS news feeds that will load with news stories if you have an active internet connection.
You can reload any RSS feed by right clicking on the feed icon, and selecting "Reload Live Bookmark".
When Mozilla Firefox is closed, all cookies and private data are removed by the default Rapidweather Remaster settings.
Should you want to delete all cookies and private data while you have Mozilla Firefox up and running, click on:
Tools - > Delete Private Data
This can be done for security reasons, in case a subsequent web page being viewed has scripts that could access your Private Data stored in Firefox's ~/.mozilla directory.
In any event, when Firefox is closed, the Rapidweather Remaster Firefox control script will take the additional step of deleting the entire ~/.mozilla directory, to prevent any information about your browsing session from remaining in the running linux system.
The Firefox, Opera and Flock browsers will always start with the default Rapidweather configuration, and delete all traces of web surfing when they are closed.
Special scripts control all three web browsers, and handle this operation for you.
For instance, Mozilla Firefox is handled by a script that places a default ~/.mozilla setup in the home directory only when the Firefox browser is started by the user the first time.
This is done to save /ramdisk memory in the event that the user does not use Firefox.
The control scripts for Opera and Flock handle their /ramdisk directories the same way, to save /ramdisk memory space, and for security reasons.
There are other small differences in the way the scripts handle Flock, as compared to Firefox, to prevent conflicts when these browsers are run.
New in Beta 67 is Thunderbird Mail (1.0.6), from Mozilla.
(Thunderbird Mail is now version 1.5.0.5 as of Beta 96)
If you use Thunderbird Mail, be sure and Save your configuration, as described above, so your e-mail settings will be restored.
Thunderbird Mail is in the "Internet" section of the IceWM and Fluxbox menus.
Also, there is a quick-launch icon on the IceWM toolbar. KDE has a desktop icon for Thunderbird.
What about the Opera web browser?
Opera 9.02 has been included in this remaster as an alternative web browser to Mozilla Firefox.
You may prefer it, as it boots faster on older computers, and has many advantages over Firefox.
The tabs are easier to use, the close button is located on the tab itself.
There is an icon on the left side of the upper IceWM toolbar for Opera. Click once to start.
Opera has been preconfigured to allow the SciTE editor to be used to display web page source.
Opera will show the web page HTML exactly as it was written, using the SciTE editor.
Although Mozilla Firefox can show web page source, it cannot be set up to use SciTE editor, and
Firefox will not display the web page source "as it was written", but in Firefox's own way.
Opera 9 has been provided in this remaster for the use of web page maintainers, to look at your web
pages in a different web browser, as well as to obtain your page source in the SciTE editor.
The Opera web browser is now free, with no fee required. There is no advertisement area, as in older versions of Opera.
That unused area of the toolbar is now blank, awaiting a re-design by the Opera developers.
In this remaster, the Opera web browser is started (booted) using a "security and crash-protection script", that also deletes the home directory Opera files when the browser is opened and closed, so no trace of Opera's history, cookies, cache or perferences remain when the browser is closed, and any existing Opera home directory files are deleted before the browser starts, in the event that a "restored" copy is present in the home directory.
Therefore, on initial start-up Opera uses a default configuration with no personal information present from a prior Opera session. A previous Opera home directory, containing history, cookies and other personal data would represent a security risk. These files are the "Opera personal information" and are generated as the browser is used to surf the web. The security script (application) has been upgraded in Beta 88B to provide crash protection for Opera. Should the web browser unexpectedly exit, or crash, the user can restart it with the home directory Opera files intact, as they were before Opera closed, exited, or crashed. This feature can return the user to the exact web location being viewed before Opera's unexpected exit. This works in combination with Opera's own crash-recovery setup, as though the system were running on a hard drive. In the unlikely event that additional unexpected exits or crashes by Opera occur, the security script provides two additional restarts of Opera, for a total of three, if the original Opera start-up is counted.
In all cases, the user is given the option to close Opera, and delete the personal information. The "security script" does not allow for saving of Opera's home directory files for use the next time the system is booted. To start Opera, with the security script in place, all the user has to do is click on the Opera icon or menu item. When the user exits Opera normally, the security script will ask if the user wanted to close Opera and delete personal information, or if Opera is to be restarted (later in the session), using the Opera personal information currently in place. Opera is set up to give the user a choice when the browser is closed, to delete all of the home directory files, or to retain them for use later. Normally, when Opera is closed, most of the personal data is removed by Opera itself as set up by default in Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux. The "extra step" that Opera can take is to delete the home directory files, by using the built-in security script. The choice option allows downloaded RSS feed data (news stories) to be retained for use by Opera when it is restarted later in the session, should the user elect to keep the Opera home directory files and not delete them. In that event, when Opera exits, the home directory files for Opera are purged of personal data, history, cookies, other online data, but downloaded RSS feed news stories are retained. When Opera is restarted, the RSS system will add to the list of existing RSS news stories retained within the Opera home directory files. If the user elects to close Opera and delete all home directory files (choice is presented by the security script) , the existing RSS feed news stories will be deleted. The next time Opera is started, with a new default configuration, the RSS feeds will download in a few minutes if there is an active internet connection.
The Opera desktop icon in KDE also will run Opera using the security script.
For those interested in how the "security and crash-protection script works, review the files "start_opera.sh" and "start_opera_kde.sh" located in the /usr/local/keepers directory.
These scripts are fully commented, as are all scripts found in that directory.
Opera, as protected by the security script, is designed for on-line banking, making purchases from merchant web sites using a credit card number, and accessing a stock broker web site such as Merrill Lynch or E-Trade, where a username and password is necessary. The system is protected at all times by the Guarddog Firewall, enabled automatically when the linux system is booted up. Since this is a livecd linux, and is almost impossible to infect with a virus or trojan, your personal data will enjoy a greater degree of safety than with almost any other operating system. Using Opera does provide a high degree of security compared with other web browsers, even without the security script in place.
RSS feeds have been added to Opera web browser as of Beta 81C.
Opera has thirteen different news RSS feeds providing over 150 current news stories and articles within two minutes of connecting with dial-up internet access.
This figure will vary, and is an estimate to give you an idea of how many stories and articles you will be receiving with that number of active RSS feeds.
Often it will be more.
Beta 88C adjusts the timing and configuration of the feeds.
As you remain connected to the internet, new stories will be received by Opera, increasing the total available for review.
At the top of the Opera browser window, you will see "feeds" between "bookmarks" and "tools".
Clicking on "feeds" will open a drop-down box, with the various available feeds, and the number of stories in each one.
(If no number of stories is shown, the stories have not yet downloaded from the internet.)
These are handled by Opera's mail system, and are presented as mail messages,
with a brief summary of the story or article, and a link to the web page referenced by the feed.
Normally, the RSS feeds will fill with stories within a couple of minutes on dial-up, less when using broadband.
If you use dial-up, always start your dial-up connection before starting Opera.
Opera will check for an active internet connection on startup, and soon download the RSS feeds.
If there is no connection to the internet, Opera will not try to load the RSS feeds again for a while.
One way to get a particular RSS feed to fill with stories is to click on "Feeds", and select the RSS feed you need.
The feed will open in the browser main window, and usually, within a few seconds, fill with stories.
That works if you have an active connection to the internet, via dial-up or broadband, and are in a hurry to get a particular RSS feed filled with stories.
You may do this with others, and soon you will find that all of the RSS feeds will load (fill) with stories from the web sites.
A "notice popup" will appear at the bottom right of your screen, telling you which feeds are downloaded, and how many stories for each one.
Another way to get a new selection of stories for all or some of the RSS feeds is to follow these instructions:
If you have one particular feed that will not load with stories, use this method:
Firefox, Flock and Opera web browsers will load their default home directory files into /ramdisk (/home/knoppix directory) only when the browsers are started by the user.
These directories are ~/.mozilla ,~/.flock and ~/.opera in the /ramdisk/home/knoppix directory.
When the user surfs the web, and has browser history, a cache of web pages, cookies, and preferences settings for the browser,
these files are stored in the /ramdisk in those directories.
This also includes Opera RSS feed stories received.
Depending on the amount of RAM that the user's computer has, 128 MB, 256 MB, etc. that memory is shared by the system processes and the /ramdisk.
It is important, therefore, for the system to conserve /ramdisk useage, when an application such as a web browser is not being used.
In all prior Beta builds, default Rapidweather configurations for all web browsers are preloaded into /ramdisk at system startup,
ready for use when the user starts Mozilla Firefox, Flock, or Opera.
This method used more /ramdisk space than was necessary, so the new browser control scripts only load the default Rapidweather configurations for Mozilla Firefox, Flock and Opera into /ramdisk when any browser is started.
Then, Mozilla Firefox, Flock and Opera are now set up to delete any user configuration, history, cache, cookies, when these browsers exit by removing all of the files and directories for the browser in the /ramdisk.
Normally, the browsers are set up to handle some deletion of personal data on exit, but this advanced step of deleting the directories and files removes all trace of the use of the web browser from the RAM memory.
Ramdisk memory space is saved by this change, the browsers do not use any /ramdisk memory until the browser is started and delete any /ramdisk directories and files when the browser exits
Opera RSS feed story summaries that have been received are deleted when Opera is closed by the user.
The next time the browser is started, the required default home directory files are again placed in /ramdisk, ready for use.
Opera will then reload the RSS feed stories with the current ones if there is an active internet connection.
The same thing is true about Firefox RSS feed story listings. Firefox does not provide a story summary like Opera does, but like Opera, will delete the RSS feed data when closed.
While Opera is open, the RSS feed stories will continue to be received, and added to the list. If you need to stop the download of RSS feed stories:
Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Flock may also be started from the desktop icons in the KDE window manager.
Note: As a comparison, Mozilla Firefox presents RSS feeds as bookmarks toolbar items,
when a RSS feed site is clicked, a drop-down box appears, with all of the titles of the various articles, stories, or blog entries.
When a title is clicked, Firefox goes directly to the web page referenced by the feed.
Both Opera and Firefox web browsers are set up with a number of RSS feeds by default as of Beta 81C.
Normally, these web browsers do not have any feeds enabled or active.
You may want to have other RSS feeds not provided by default, when using Mozilla Firefox.
When you visit a web page, and you find that a RSS feed is available, you may install it for Mozilla Firefox for the current session only.
Although Opera does not save any RSS feeds from one bootup to the next, while the browser is open you may open the "manage feeds" section,
and uncheck the one you want to temporarily delete from your RSS feed list.
As long as you keep Opera open, you may reselect it later, if desired.
Very soon after you connect to the web with Opera, a pop-up message will appear at the bottom right corner, advising that the RSS feeds are downloaded.
Sometimes there will only be one or two downloaded over time, these are new stories.
What is the advantage in having RSS feeds?
You are able to scan many stories quickly without having to go to the individual web sites to see the stories.
Dial up users benefit the most, especially when using Opera.
A particular story will catch your attention, and you will then have the opportunity to go to the website and read the entire story.
Firefox may have the advantage here, as you can quickly scan all of the RSS feeds in the bookmarks toolbar to find one that interests you.
Opera requires you to open each site's RSS feed page to see the list of stories, but you can click on each story there, and a detailed summary is shown.
Very little bandwidth required to do that, and you can disconnect (if on dialup) and read the summaries, which have been downloaded by Opera.
Also included is the Flock web browser, based on Mozilla Firefox.
Flock has additional blogging features, you can post directly to a blog using Flock, rather than go through the blog website interface.
Flock allows you to select from several blog hosting sites, and set up an account for your blog.
With Flock, it is possible to sign up for a blog, pick a template, and publish an initial post to it and have your own blog web page up and running in 20 minutes or less!
You may view Rapidweather's blog created and maintained with Flock here.
As with Mozilla Firefox and Opera, no personal configuration for Flock can be saved for use the next time the linux system is booted.
All traces of the use of Flock to surf the web are removed from the running system when the Flock browser is closed.
For instance, if you do online banking, and the web site instructs you to "close your browser" when you are done, the Flock control script (/usr/local/keepers/start_flock.sh) will
delete all of the files and directories in the /ramdisk that were used by Flock during the web surfing session.
When the browser is again restarted, the base Rapidweather configuration is loaded into /ramdisk, so the browser will display the built-in home web page,
and have other default settings made for the user, such as the size 16 default font to display normal web page text.
New for Beta 85A is an addition to the built-in home web page, a sliding menu bar on the left hand side near the top.
This pop up menu can display your home directory (ramdisk). There are menu items for several /ramdisk directories, and a help page.
Each menu item will open a new browser tab with the directory displayed.
This menu is only available when the "web.html" home page is viewed in the Opera, Firefox or Flock web browsers.
To access the sliding menu bar, position the mouse cursor over the tab. The menu bar has been configured so as not to present a distraction to the normal
use of the "web.html" home page when used with a 1024x768 or above display.
What other applications have been added?
Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux contains several additional applications not available in the base Knoppix Linux 3.4.
In addition to Mozilla Firefox, Opera 9, Flock, the SciTE editor and the emelFM file manager are provided.
You will find Scite and emelFM in Menu -> Admin Tools.
In IceWM, there are buttons on the taskbar for Scite and emelFM.
One of the main items added is the selection of mouse cursor themes, with the associated scripts to make each one active
as required by the user. On the IceWM toolbar, click on the [M] to bring up the Mouse Cursor Theme Selector,
where the user can select a cursor theme. There is a View All button, showing examples of each theme. (See the mouse cursor section for details)
The KDE Guarddog firewall has been added to provide extra protection while you surf the internet.
The firewall is active when you boot the system, and will allow normal web surfing and email sending and receiving.
See the Firewall section for information on how to configure if you need to change the default settings.
Also, see "Connecting to the Net" section, for the dial up applications added.
As of Beta 82B, The Calcoo Calculator has been added to the "Extras" menu in IceWM and Fluxbox.
Calcoo is a general-purpose scientific calculator, that is light weight, and does not require the startup of some KDE components as does Kcalc.
Another feature of the Remaster is the convenient arrangement of the menus, in Icewm and Fluxbox.
The auto-hiding double-height Icewm toolbar has quick-launch icons for many commonly used programs
backed by confirmation dialogs in the case of machine shutdown and reboot items.
More additional applications are discussed in the following two sections, Remastering the CD, and The X Multimedia System.
Also, take a look at the Opera web browser section, as of Beta 85 special scripts handle the startup and close-down of the Opera and Flock web browsers,
these scripts are designed to save /ramdisk memory, and to provide a higher degree of security for the running system after the browsers are closed.
The script for Opera also provides crash-protection, allowing the user to recover from an Opera crash.
All traces of web-surfing use are removed from the running system by the control scripts when Firefox, Opera and Flock are closed by the user.
This is designed to protect users of on-line banking web sites, and when making purchases on-line with a credit card.
Firefox does provide a way to clear all web surfing data:
Tools -> Clear Private Data.
(on the Firefox toolbar)
Although this is usually sufficient to clear web surfing information that is stored, the use of any of the web browsers provides a high degree of
protection, in that all of the files and directories are deleted from the /ramdisk when the browsers are closed by the user.
Flock is based on Mozilla Firefox code and provides a similar web-browsing experience, but does not have any RSS feeds enabled by default as does Firefox.
The NoScript extension is only available installed by default in Mozilla Firefox. Enabling web sites scripts to allow certain features using NoScript can complicate a normal
web browsing experience while using Mozilla Firefox, but this is done for security reasons. The use of the Flock browser allows normal, uncomplicated web browsing, with all web-page scripts allowed .(NoScript not installed in Flock).
For those interested in remastering this CD, the IceWM menu provides access to the Automated Remaster program:
Menu -> Admin-Tools -> Remaster CD ->Automated Remaster.
Look in /usr/local/keepers for this script, "remaster_command.sh" and the companion how-to text document "remaster_command".
That text document provides useful information on remastering this CD, and shows the procedures for remastering a cd.
The how-to text document predates the addition of the two Automated programs, those should be used in all cases to set up and remaster the CD.
Also new as of Beta 79 is the Automated Master Copy program, providing a way to copy the CD to a linux hard drive partition for remastering purposes.
Access to the Master Copy script is through the IceWM menu:
Menu -> Admin-Tools -> Remaster CD ->Automated Master Copy.
These two programs may also be found in the Fluxbox menu.
Once changes have been made to the master copy, the Automated Remaster program can then be used to prepare an .iso that can be burned to CD.
Both of these programs can be run in a root terminal, one can be found on the IceWM toolbar.
You may navigate to /usr/local/keepers to find these two scripts.
Normally, you can run them from the menu items, in the IceWM and Fluxbox Window managers.
The Automated Remaster program may need to be run in a root shell from within the TWM window manager on computers with limited resources.
Although these scripts are used by the developer to remaster the CD, they come with a disclaimer
that additional procedures will be necessary to make any changes to the "master copy" that the user may want to make
and may not entirely provided or disclosed in those programs and documents.
If you are experienced in remastering Knoppix Linux, these items will prove to be useful in your work.
Be advised that these scripts are designed to work with Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux, and have not been tested on any other livecd linux.
All versions after Beta 79 have been made by using the Automated Master Copy program to set up a master-copy, then changes were made, such as the upgrade
of Mozilla Firefox to version 1.5 and later, and other small changes.
When all changes are completed, the Automated Remaster program is run to compress the filesystem and make the iso that can then be burned to a CD.
The text document /usr/local/keepers/remaster_command shows how to place your master copy in a chroot environment,
so the Debian package servers can be accessed with "apt-get", to add or remove debian packages from the master copy filesystem.
The X Multimedia System:
You must have a sound card installed in your computer, and the card should be detected by the system for XMMS to
work.
When Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux boots, a female voice will announce the system startup
sequence at some point before the desktop is ready for use. If you hear that voice, then your sound card is compatable
with the linux system.
Now for the details on XMMS:
Using XMMS to tune in internet radio stations:
New in Beta 62 is the Station Selector, an interface to XMMS, allowing simple button selection of several sample Internet Radio Stations.
To try it out:
(In Icewm) Menu -> Internet -> Radio Station Selector for XMMS.
Note: The Guarddog Firewall may block some radio stations.
You may have to disable the firewall temporarily to listen to some of them.
Should you have problems with XMMS not being able to close, see the KDE System Guard section at the end of
The X Multimedia System area, click here to go there.
You must already be connected to the internet with dialup or broadband to use the radio station buttons in Station Selector.
There are buttons for dialup and broadband radio stations in the Station Selector.
In the first line of the Station Selector interface, the date the stations were checked
is shown as 08/06.
In subseqent Beta Builds, look for the month and year in the interface to determine when the stations were last checked.
Be advised that the Station Selector has these station's internet addresses built in, and over time some of them may go off the air.
Some of them may change programming format, or stream bitrate.
These stations were carefully selected and tested, and have high-capacity servers, and excellent audio quality. They should remain active for quite a while.
Having said that, you may install the latest version of Station Selector by following this procedure:
New for Beta 90:
The Station Selector for XMMS has a new button that downloads the "latest version" from the internet, and starts it up.
Click on the "Update Station Selector" button, and everything is done for you. The file is downloaded, installed for this session, and the new Station Selector is started up.
One of the constant problems with the Station Selector is internet radio stations changing IP addresses, or going off the air.
The various internet radio station buttons are "hard coded" with the "current" IP address, and they work as of the date of the Station Selector.
If I find that some of the radio station buttons do not work due to an invalid IP address, I locate replacements, and upload a new Station Selector file
to the server. The script run by the new "Update Station Selector" button will quickly download the new file, and install it in ~/html, in place of the old one.
The new Station Selector version will then be started, ready for use.
This action is good only for this bootup session. To keep the new file, it will be necessary to copy the file to a home directory that will allow the knoppix "saveconfig" to save it for use next time.
One such directory is the ~/.Wallpapers directory. Any file copied to that directory will be saved when Menu -> Admin-Tools -> Save your configuration is run.
See Saving your Settings for details.
Otherwise, the user can download the file each time, and be certain that the latest version is being used. It does not take long, even on dial-up, as the file is small.
Here is the manual download and installation procedure, prior to the introduction of the "Update Station Selector" button on the Station Selector interface:
You may visit https://www.angelfire.com/ms/telegram/station_selector.tcl to download the latest version.
Be sure and chmod +x station_selector.tcl to make it executable before placing it in /home/knoppix/html.
You may use Opera to download the 12K file. Use emelFM to transfer the file to the /home/knoppix/html directory.
If your browser asks where to save the file, you may save it directly to the /home/knoppix/html directory, overwriting the old "station_selector.tcl" file.
The application can be accessed using the menu and icons (KDE), if the file is placed in the ~/html directory.
Another way to do it:
If you use "make persistant home directory" in Menu -> Admin Tools to save your home directory, then the new version will be installed when you boot the system, overwriting the one on the cd.
Otherwise, you will need to save the new "Station Selector" file on external media such as a floppy or USB memory stick, or on a hard drive partition, and
restore the file to your ~/html directory manually after you boot the linux system each time.
New for Beta 90B:
In an attempt to address the problem of runaway xmms processes, the Station Selector for XMMS "Stop the Radio" button
now accesses a script in the CD to close the XMMS player interface, and end the xmms processes.
The script is located at /usr/local/keepers/stop_xmms.sh, and closes the player interface by identifying the "pid(s)" of XMMS, and
using "kill" to remove them from the system.
Under normal circumstances this will work to close the xmms player interface, but may not end all of the xmms processes,
if a runaway xmms process has occurred.
These are sometimes caused by trying to connect to a station that is blocked by the firewall.
Also, there is a menu item to run this script in IceWM:
Menu -> Admin-Tools -> Stop XMMS.
The Station Selector for XMMS interface can be closed prior to running the above menu item.
If the system is still affected by a runaway xmms process, KDE System Guard can be used to identify and kill the xmms processes.
The solution is to temporarily disable the firewall before using the Station Selector for XMMS.
For use with dialup internet connections using Wvdial (See Wvdial section on setting up your connection), there are "Dial" and "Hangup" buttons
provided in the Station Selector interface. If you are not already connected to the internet, and have configured Wvdial
for your Internet Service Provider, you can use these buttons to connect and disconnect.
As of Beta 66, the Station Selector has "Setup" and "Help" buttons for the dial-up section.
The "Setup" button starts the "Setup Interface for Wvdial", the same wvdial configuration application used with the Internet Dialer Interface for WvDial.
These features are available without having to leave the Station Selector interface.
You may use these dial-up buttons in Station Selector without having to connect to one of the radio stations.
In fact, you may close the
Station Selector, and use the Menu to disconnect from the internet when you want to do that. Your internet connection established with
WvDial, using the Station Selector, will remain "up", in a normal fashion, independent on whether or not Station Selector is running.
As you can see, there are lots of combinations available with these interfaces.
Once connected however, you may then use one of the station buttons in the Station Selector to connect to an internet radio station with XMMS.
Using broadband, the station should begin to play almost immediately. Dial up users will have a short wait before the station will begin to play.
After you click on a station, check the XMMS window for the status on buffering the Mp3 stream. When done, the station will play.
It is interesting to note that the station will continue to play for about a minute using this buffered stream, once the dial-up connection is ended.
During normal play while connected, XMMS will fetch a new stream when the currently buffered stream has been played.
You should not notice any break in the play, even using dial up.
You may need to press the "play" button on XMMS on the first station you connect to.
When you change stations with the Station Selector, the station should play without having to press the "play" button again.
The Station Selector provides a small number of radio stations for you to try.
The station buttons are arranged in two columns, one for Dialup users, and one for Broadband users.
Should you want to listen to something else, see the next section on Using Firefox and Opera with XMMS to select radio stations.
Tips on using the XMMS interface:
The XMMS interface can be double-sized, so you can see the controls better:
Click on the XMMS titlebar, above the words "x multimedia system", then press Ctrl-D on your keyboard.
XMMS will now be "double-sized". On the left side, note the letters "OAIDV", arranged vertically. Click on each of these to see what they do.
Using Firefox and Opera with XMMS:
Opera 8 has been configured to automatically use XMMS to listen to internet radio. Most of the following information about Firefox applies to Opera also.
Since the Mozilla Firefox web browser in included in this remaster, you'll want to use Firefox to visit web sites
that provide Mp3 streams (internet radio) , and play them through XMMS.
Firefox has been preconfigured to automatically start XMMS for you when you connect to an internet radio station:
One site providing interenet radio streams is http://www.digitallyimported.com/
When you are there, click on the "listen now" button, and choose "Trance" -> "Mp3 Streams - > 24 K (if you are using a dial up modem connection).
In some cases, Mozilla Firefox will open a dialog box asking if you want to use xmms. Normally, Firefox has been already set up in the Remaster to use the XMMS player, so the dialog box will not appear.
The site also has Classical -> Mp3 Streams -> 24 K , for dial up modem connections.
Using SHOUTcast.com:
Another good website is http://www.shoutcast.com. They have thousands of Mp3 stream sites (stations) to choose from, featuring internet radio stations from around
the world.
Once connected to SHOUTcast with Firefox, you can sort those stations according to your bandwidth requirements.
Once you are connected to a station, XMMS will play the Mp3 stream for you.
Changing stations via shoutcast.com only takes a few seconds, and once the Mp3 stream is buffered, you will hear the station's broadcast.
You may need to press the "play" button on XMMS on the first station you connect to. Subsequent stations should play without having to press the "play" button.
On the XMMS interface, look for the small button "pl" for Playlist. Click on this, and another window will open, with the name of the
internet radio station you are connected to. You may resize this window using the control in the lower right hand corner of the Playlist.
If you "Save your Configuration", then the Playlist window will return each time XMMS starts.
Links to several web radio station sites are provided in "Your Home Page"
the default home page in Mozilla Firefox and Opera, provided in this remaster.
(Menu-> Firefox _or_Opera.) Scroll down to the last row of links.
There you will find a nice selection of radio station links, including SHOUTcast and Digitally Imported.
Once you have an internet radio station tuned in, you may open another Mozilla Firefox tab, and surf to any other website, and
continue to listen to the station with XMMS.
(You can do that if you have broadband).
(Opera 8 can also be used for internet radio with XMMS.)
Be sure and save your settings if you have positioned the XMMS and playlist windows
to your tastes, and want them restored when you next boot up the system, and use XMMS.
Menu -> Admin-Tools -> Save KNOPPIX configuration.
An additional visualization plugin has been added to XMMS in this remaster.
Bump Scope works with downloaded mp3 streams.
To enable it: Menu -> Internet -> Radio Station Selector for XMMS.
Once you connect to one of the internet radio stations with XMMS:
In the XMMS control panel click on the little symbol at the upper left hand corner, and navigate to
the visualization plugins, and enable Bump Scope. It looks like a thin metal wall, with a flashlight beam on it, and
when the music plays, the sound patterns (as on an oscilloscope) appear in the metal!
(Bump Scope, and the other
visualization plugins, do not seem to work with XMMS play CD.)
See the XMMS play CD section, below.
There are all kinds of plugins available in the preferences control panel. (See note below on processing power
requirements, below.)
Using XMMS Visualization Plugins:
Be advised that a fair amount of processing power is required especially if you have several Visualization Plugins running.
If you have a swap area, then your computer should be able to handle the Visualization Plugins.
In the Fluxbox window manager, find the Station Selector in Menu -> Internet -> XMMS ->Radio Station Selector for XMMS.
The Station Selector has a button to stop XMMS, useful if you have more than one instance of XMMS trying to connect, and need to start over.
If you have used the "Stop the Radio" button, and need to reconnect, just press one of the internet radio station buttons in Station Selector.
Then XMMS will start, and connect to the chosen internet radio station.
The "Dial" and "Hangup" buttons in the Station Selector will also work in the Fluxbox window manager.
Also, use Firefox or Opera to access shoutcast.com on the built-in start page and then select from thousands of available internet radio stations.
That can be done in all the window managers, KDE, icewm, and fluxbox.
Playing audio CD's with XMMS.
If you only have one CDROM drive, you will need to boot the system with the knoppix code "knoppix toram".
The "toram" code will only work if you have about 1GB of RAM.
It is also helpful if you have a hard drive swap partition.
That way, your CDROM drive will be available for an audio CD, as you can eject the Rapidweather Remaster CD.
Another recommendation for Windows 98 users is to copy the cd to the hard drive when the Rapidweather Remaster CD
boots up.
When you first boot the system, press F-2 and then F-3 to see the Knoppix cheat codes to do that.
It will then be
necessary to still use the Rapidweather Remaster CD to boot that hard drive installation, then once that is done, you
may eject the CD, and put your audio CD in the tray.
(It is not possible to do that with a Windows XP hard drive. )
For Windows 98 computers, be sure that you have plenty of free hard drive space to hold the knoppix file, at least a gigabyte or two.
When you boot from the CD, and reach the boot: prompt, the F-2 and F-3 keys bring up lists of the Knoppix codes necessary to
access a copy of the CD placed on the hard drive. In many cases, the system will run much faster from the hard drive, than from the
CD alone.
If you have a second CDROM drive, you may be able to access the audio on a cd there, when the XMMS control panel appears, see below:
If you are able to use "toram", then the entire system will run off memory, not the linux CD, plus memory.
Once up and running, you may eject your linux CD, and place your audio cd in the tray.
To play, Menu->XMMS->Play CD.
The XMMS control panel will appear, and you will need to open /cdrom2 to get to your play list.
(If you don't find your play list there, try other /cdrom directories that are shown in the panel.)
Once found, the tracks on the cd will appear.
Click on "Add all Files in Directory".
Then on the XMMS control, click on the "PL" button above the large X on the right side of the
XMMS control.
Your playlist, with the times of each recording, will appear in the Play List.
Double click on one of the songs, and it will start playing.
This should work if you have a sound card that is detected and set up by the system, and have also been
able to play Mp3 streams as described in the section above.
If you need to enlarge the XMMS control panel, click on the
"D" letter on the left side of the control panel.
None of the visualization plugins will work with Xmms Play CD.
Update: as of Beta 110:
Broadband internet access is used more frequently now, compared to dial-up access.
No real changes have been made in Beta 110 for the use of XMMS, or the Station Selector, but the AmaroK player has been added as an alternative music player.
Tests have shown that closing XMMS or AmaroK manually when changing internet radio stations may prevent, in most cases, lockups or runaway processes discussed in the next section.
In some cases, using Firefox to access the Shoutcast internet radio station website has good results, in that XMMS does not have to be closed, and will change from station to station as required by the user's clicking on the various radio stations provided in the Shoutcast lists.
During these tests, the Guarddog Firewall remained up, and in place.
One suggestion is to use the "Stop the Radio" button on the Station Selector for XMMS if xmms fails to respond when clicking on a radio station in Firefox/Shoutcast.
XMMS will close, then click on another internet radio station, XMMS should immediately start, and begin to pay the stream for you.
It is possible that when the user clicks on some stations, XMMS can lock up, but not on other known good stations, recently played.
When you click on a station in Firefox/Shoutcast, your mp3 stream should begin to pay within a few seconds (using broadband).
Beta 82 adds the KDE System Guard - Process Table application in Menu -> Admin-Tools. (For IceWM)
This is a very useful application for any linux system, in that it can be used to stop any runaway process that is using all of your CPU's processing power.
System Guard is controlled by a script that allows the resetting of the authority file when System Guard exits, you will need to click on the "OK" box for that to happen.
Here is an example:
Using the Guarddog firewall can create problems for XMMS when some internet radio stations are played, either from
Shoutcast.com or other internet radio web sites, or the "Station Selector for XMMS" application found in Menu -> Internet in IceWM or Fluxbox, or the desktop icon in KDE .
The firewall is started automatically when the system boots.
In tests, the dial-up (non-broadband) internet radio stations can often lock up XMMS, causing a runaway process (xmms) that uses all of the CPU's power.
Not all radio stations have this effect, all the time.
Sometimes the first few radio stations that the user listens to cause no problems, then XMMS locks up on a particular station that the user is trying to
tune in.
It is best to disable the firewall temporarily to prevent the problem from occuring:
Using the toolbar icon for Guarddog in IceWM, or Menu -> Admin Tools -> Guarddog Firewall
Click on the Advanced tab in Guarddog and check "disable firewall", and click "Apply".
Your firewall is disabled, until you want to re-enable it by unchecking the "disable firewall" checkbox, and clicking "Apply" in the Guarddog interface.
If you have not disabled the firewall, and XMMS locks up, and you have a runaway process, as seen on the CPU activity window on the IceWM toolbar (will show mostly "green"), you may use KDE System Guard to kill the
various "xmms" entries in the process list in System Guard.
Just hold down the control key, and highlight all of the xmms processes, and then click on the "kill" button on the System Guard interface.
You will be asked to confirm that you want to "kill" these processes, answer "yes".
Your system is now back to normal.
System Guard constantly refreshes it's list of processes, and you will then be able to see that the "killed" processes are gone.
Check the "cpu meter" on the IceWM toolbar, to see that it shows mostly "black", indicating that your cpu no longer has a runaway process. It will show mostly "green" if it does have a runaway process.
Normally, a couple of xmms processes will remain in the System Guard list, if more are there, and the "kill" command did not work, you may need to reboot the computer.
If your computer has enough resources, you may keep the KDE System Guard interface open for use.
Your CPU activity window on the IceWM toolbar will now show mostly "black", indicating that the CPU useage has gone back to normal.
The CPU activity window would show mostly "green" all the time, if there is a runaway process.
You may use a root rxvt (found on IceWM toolbar) and enter the command "top" to generate a report that shows all of the system processes,
and other interesting items about your system's memory useage and CPU's activity.
If one process is using almost all of the CPU's processing power, you will see it in this constantly-updated report, called "top".
The problem with XMMS and Guarddog can occur on any computer running this CD, it is a bug.
See the "Update: as of Beta 110:" section above for some techniques to avoid problems with either the XMMS or AmaroK players.
Also, tests with other linux distributions have uncovered similar problems with XMMS.
Although other applications can cause a runaway process, requiring the use of System Guard to repair the system, none are known at this time.
The use of System Guard to fix the problem is necessary because using the command line to kill xmms may not work:
(In a root rxvt shell, killall xmms
You may try that, sometimes it will work.
Also, try "kill 958" -> an example of an XMMS process number as shown in "Top".
Try that with several of the XMMS process numbers, you may be successful in stopping XMMS, allowing you to start over.
This particular problem with XMMS and the Guarddog firewall can be prevented by temporarily disabling the firewall if you are going to use the dial-up section of
the "Station Selector for XMMS".
In review, to disable the firewall:
Start the Guarddog application, and click on the "advanced" tab, and check the "Disable Firewall" box, then click "Apply".
The other solution to a locked up XMMS or runaway XMMS process is to reboot the computer.
Your XMMS, Mozilla Firefox, Dial-up and Email settings are not normally saved when you power-down the
system.
For that, you will need to save your configuration: Menu -> Admin Tools -> Save your configuration.
This file will normally be less than 250K, so it should fit on a floppy.
The "Save Knoppix Configuration" program will ask you where you want to save this file.
One recommended place is your Windows 98 partition, usually /dev/hda1.
This will not work with Windows XP hard drives.
Optionally, you may use a USB memory stick, plugged into a USB port.
Even a small 32 MB stick will have enough space to save your files.
You can plug the memory stick into a running system, and it will be recognized, and ready
for use for this purpose, prior to starting the "Save Knoppix Configuration" program.
One of the choices will be "sda1", which will be the USB memory stick.
Then when you next boot your linux system, at the boot prompt, enter: "knoppix myconfig=scan" and the
system will locate your settings file and restore it.
Should you use a memory stick, plug that into the USB port prior to booting the system if you wish to restore from the memory stick.
It is not possible to restore your settings once you have booted up the system, and are at the desktop.
With most modern PC's, with Windows XP preinstalled on the hard drive, the USB memory stick is the recommended way to
save your configuration, as the restoration files cannot be stored on the Windows XP filesystem on the hard drive.
What about Error Messages?
Often when I shut down the system, the console shows some "error messages". Should I be
concerned about them?
Well, if the applications you have been using seem to work OK, then you can ignore the
error messages. Be advised that a lot of the
applications are still in the testing phase of their development, and that this is normal.
You should not have any problem other than the appearance of these messages.
If any dialog box appears with an error message, just click "ok" to dismiss the message, and go on with what you were
doing.
There are some cases where an error message will appear on some computers, but not on others. This is a live-cd linux
distribution, and can be used on a wide range of modern personal computers.
In the rare event that an application crashes for no apparent reason, and you have to restart it, then these error messages
might tell why.
Other times, in a shell,
you may see messages indicating problems Linux is having with the command that you are asking the system to
do.
One way to find out about something like this is to write down the message, and put it in Google, and search for
answers to the problem on the internet. Using a Linux system sometimes requires the user to have a good knowledge
of how Linux works, to understand what is going on. There are lots of good books on using linux in your local bookstore,
and also available for purchase through Amazon.com. Most of the applications provided in Rapidweather Remaster
of Knoppix Linux have been tested and found to work, so your overall problems should be minimal. If you need
assistance and help with a specific issue, you may want to visit the Knoppix Linux user forum and ask questions
there. Give it a day or so for a reply to be posted in the forum. There is a link to the forum at the bottom of this page.
Be sure and mention that you are using a remaster of Knoppix version 3.4.
What about viruses?
Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux will boot and run entirely from a linux-based CD-ROM, using
your system memory (RAM) and the CD-ROM drive.
If the computer is turned off, everything disappears!
Even if someone had a really nasty virus or worm actively and aggressively at work on their hard drive,
because this linux operating system never touches your hard drive, the virus would never load.
If someone were to boot their native OS with a running virus and connect to your network, the virus would have no place to go if
all the other computers on the network were running from a linux-based CD-ROM such as this one.
You'll save a lot of time and money not having to keep virus scanning software running on your system and
keeping it up to date.
As an added security measure, Mozilla Firefox is preconfigured to not save passwords and filled in form data, and
any cookies that have been downloaded are deleted when you close Firefox. Additionally, in Firefox, you may want to use the toolbar item:
"Tools -> Clear Private Data" once in a while during an
extended-use Firefox session, where your machine is running for hours at a time, and connected to the internet.
The Opera web browser also has "Tools" -> "Delete Private Data" for this purpose.
Mozilla Firefox has the NoScript extension installed, which will filter any scripts the system receives from web pages, allowing only those the user deems necessary for certain web page features.
If you have wondered how a web page "knows" your geographic location so targeted advertisements can be shown, it is the javascripts in the web page, and these can be filtered using NoScript.
A web page will not display these advertisements, since the script cannot run in Mozilla Firefox with the NoScript extension. You may, however, click on the "S" icon in the lower right hand corner of the Firefox window, and easily allow the web page scripts to run within the browser. This places the web site in a "white list" for NoScript. The web page will then reload, and your advertisement will appear.
Flash content in usatoday.com will not appear unless placed on the white list by NoScript.
Click on the "S", then click on "allow usatoday.com".
Configure your printer by selecting Menu -> Programs -> Knoppix -> Config -> Configure Printers.
If that does not work, change to the KDE window manager, and use KDEPrint, printing manager.
That application is also accessable in the Admin-Tools section of the IceWM and Fluxbox menus.
Once you get a test page printed out on your printer, be sure and save your configuration for next time.
(Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux has been tested on a HP Deskjet 722C, connected to a parallel printer port.)
Some of the newer printers available may not work.
If your printer is not listed, or you cannot get it to work, you may have to use Google, providing your printer model number, to find help.
To cut and paste in Linux one simply highlights the text with the left mouse button and then press the middle button to paste.
If you have a two button mouse you would paste by pressing the left and right button together.
Cutting and pasting takes a little practice, but is very efficient after one gets use to doing it.
In most word processors one would highlight the text and then press Ctrl+C to copy and then Ctrl+V to paste.
Cutting and pasting text is much easier in the SciTE editor, just right click to open up a menu where you can copy and paste. Even in the
SciTE editor, you may highlight text, and it is automatically copied to the "clipboard", and can be pasted into a terminal (shell) by using
the middle mouse button. The root shell is opened by clicking once on the icon on the IceWM toolbar.
Command lines can be pasted into the root shell, and then run by pressing "Enter".
Safe command lines that you can try are:
df
ls
top
Highlight one of these with your mouse and then paste it into a shell that you have opened on another desktop.
Press the middle mouse button to paste the highlighted text into the shell.
Hit "Enter" after the paste operation to run the command in the shell.
The text document "remaster_command", found at /usr/local/keepers/remaster_command contains a large
number of command lines that can be copied and pasted into a root shell to run them.
If you are able to use a hard drive partition to save your settings, explained above, you may also
want to save your Home Directory, so that files downloaded, KDE desktop icons and backgrounds, etc can be saved.
Menu -> Admin-Tools -> Make persistent home directory.(Saving Your Home Directory)
Windows XP partitions cannot be used for this purpose, and you cannot write to XP filesystems using linux, without special,
experimental programs to do that. Later versions of Knoppix can do that, however. There is always a certain risk, so you may want
to avoid using XP partitions in a read/write setup.
The "persistent home directory" file will be much larger than the "save your settings" file, and
will be constantly updated as
your use your system.
You may use a USB pen drive (memory stick) to save your settings, but using a hard drive partition is recommended for the persistent home directory.
When you create the file, you are allowed to specify the size, 500MB is a good choice for a hard drive partition, much less for a USB pen drive.
It can take some time to make the persistent home directory filesystem, depending on the size. When you start the process, be sure and wait until the
filesystem is made, and the final instructional dialog box appears as follows:
When you run the program to make the persistant home directory, you will be given instructions on how to restore it the next time you boot the system.
Normally, you will use "home=scan" at the boot prompt:
boot: knoppix myconfig=scan home=scan
This file will be in addition to the "Save Knoppix Configuration" file discussed above.
You do have the option of not restoring the home directory, and just restore your settings on bootup, as
they are handled separately.
For normal use, when only your settings are required, you may skip the "Saving Your Home Directory" option.
In that event, when you start your linux system and the boot prompt appears, just:
boot: knoppix myconfig=scan
and your personal settings will be restored from your Floppy, USB memory stick, or Hard Drive partition.
Your choice of window manager, and mouse cursor theme are retained for future use.
For instance, should you always want to use KDE as your window manager, this is the way to have your linux system
start with KDE each time.
Another way to start KDE from the beginning, instead of IceWM is to enter this at the boot prompt:
boot: desktop=kde
Whatever desktop (Icewm, Fluxbox, KDE) you are using when you do "Save Knoppix Configuration" will be restored when you
boot up the next time with the "myconfig=scan" boot code.
To restore both the persistent home directory, and your configuration:
boot: knoppix myconfig=scan home=scan
Should you have more than one set of these files on your computer, you will need to specify the location of the ones you want to use:
boot: knoppix myconfig=/dev/hdb7 home=/dev/hdb7
This represents hard drive "B", partition "7".
The names of these files are:
"Save your configuration" , configs.tbz and knoppix.sh
"persistent home directory", knoppix.img.
If you upgrade to a newer version of Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux, you will need to make a new knoppix.img file, as the
old one will overwrite the new home directory changes that may be present in the latest version.
This is also true of the Knoppix Configuration file, configs.tbz, you will
need to start over, and make a new one to go with the new version of Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux.
Effective with Beta 102, web browser user configuration cannot be saved in a persistent home directory, as the restored files will be deleted
when the browser starts, if usual icons or menu is used to start the browsers .
The web browser control scripts are active when starting Mozilla Firefox, Opera, or Flock by using the IceWM or Fluxbox "Internet" menu items, or the toolbar icons in IceWM, or the KDE desktop icons.
To start any of the three web browsers without the control scripts, use the IceWM menu:
Menu -> Extras -> Web Browsers -> Mozilla Firefox, Opera, or Flock.
The browsers will start with their default configuration. The user will then need to set them up as desired, and if a "persistent home directory" is active, the user's configuration will be automatically saved.
Using "home=scan" on the next bootup of the linux system should then recover the user's browser settings.
Placement of the "unconfigured" web browser menu items in the "Extras" sub-menu is done to partially restrict the running of the browsers without using the control scripts.
After running a web browser using the "Extras" sub-menu, the user runs a web browser using one of the IceWM toolbar icons or "Internet" menu items (with the control scripts active), any configuration will be removed from the system by the control scripts.
New for Beta 95:
The Wallpaper Control Center, Version 0.4.1 is available in the IceWM and Fluxbox menus:
Menu -> Wallpaper -> Wallpaper Control Center.
This application takes the place of the wallpaper menu items in prior Beta builds.
The Wallpaper Control Center has four general sections:
These wallpaper images are not stored in the CD, and are downloaded by using a dialup or broadband internet connection when the user clicks any of the 6 buttons.
Because of the way the script handles the images, they may be saved for future use by the Wallpaper Control Center, "downloaded wallpaper" section button "save downloaded".
How does it work?
The download application "wget" is used in a script, to obtain the image, place it in a temporary directory, and apply it to the desktop. Then the script copies the image to the ~/download directory, where the Wallpaper Control Center can zoom the image as required. When "wget" is active, a shell will display the download progress, then close.
The use of these buttons in this manner in the Wallpaper Control Center is essentially a "technology preview" setup, for demonstration purposes.
What do the images show for now?
(As of the date of this Getting Started Guide, subject to change.)
button "One" is an "X-Files Star"
button "Two" is a "car of the future"
button "Three" is an "underwater scene".
The images for Buttons Four, Five, and Six are being prepared for upload to the server as of the date of this Beta build.
Currently, there are numbered placeholder images on the server.
By the time the user wants to use these new buttons, the new wallpaper images will be in place. Click on any of them to use as desktop wallpaper.
The Wallpaper Control Center application is not available for use with KDE, which has it's own wallpaper handling system.
(See the KDE wallpaper section at the end of the "Desktop Wallpaper" section.)
Starting in Beta 88, and continuing in Beta 89 with the Wallpaper Control Center, a new "wallpaper system" is in place,
providing checks and safeguards in the handling of downloaded and saved wallpaper.
The main problem in handing wallpaper images is that only one image can be used, and the directory containing the image may not have other images there.
The various scripts used by the Wallpaper Control Center buttons take that problem into consideration, when applying a wallpaper image file in a directory, and
provide ways for the user to easily fix the problem, so the image can be successfully applied to the desktop as wallpaper.
Open the Wallpaper Control Center:
Menu -> Wallpaper -> Wallpaper Control Center.
Using Mozilla Firefox to set desktop wallpaper:
One quick way to apply an image found on the internet and viewed with Mozilla Firefox:
Locate the wallpaper image on the internet using Firefox, and right-click on the image as displayed in Firefox.
A dialog box will open, where you can choose "Set as Desktop Background", then in the background image display box that opens, click "Set Desktop Background".
You can use this method of "setting a wallpaper" anytime you are running Firefox, in IceWM, Fluxbox, or KDE.
Mozilla Firefox will then create a file, "Firefox_wallpaper.png" in the /home/knoppix directory.
This "png" file is the wallpaper image file.
(In the following discussion, "~/" represents your home directory.)
Then, using the Wallpaper Control Center, set the downloaded wallpaper image file:
Click on -> Set Firefox Wallpaper.
Your new "firefox-downloaded" wallpaper will appear on all desktops.
Anytime you want to return to the original wallpaper:
Click on -> Restore Original Wallpaper.
Important Note concerning the use of Mozilla Firefox to set desktop wallpaper.
Effective with Beta 94, the "Firefox_wallpaper.png" image installed by default when the system boots is a symbolic link, and cannot be overwritten using the method described above. First, use the file manager "emelFM" to delete the symbolic link /home/knoppix/Firefox_wallpaper.png. Then, any image found on the internet and viewed with Mozilla Firefox can be used as desktop wallpaper using the method described above, "Using Mozilla Firefox to set desktop wallpaper."
It should also be noted here that the "png" files generated by Mozilla Firefox tend to be much larger than the original image on the internet. The "png" file is stored in your /ramdisk, using memory. With the introduction of the Wallpaper Control Center, using Mozilla Firefox to set desktop wallpaper is obsolete. For these reasons, it is best to just "right-click" on the image you want to use as wallpaper in any of the web browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, and save the image to the ~/download directory. Then, the Wallpaper Control Center can apply the downloaded image, by clicking on the "Apply Normal size" button in the Downloaded Wallpaper section of the Wallpaper Control Center. The Opera browser will save the image to ~/download by default.
If the downloaded image does not fit your screen, use one of the "zoom" buttons to apply the image to the desktop, as described in the Wallpaper Control Center sections below.
Instead of downloading a wallpaper, you can choose one of the built-in Scenic wallpapers:
Click on -> (any of the twelve Scenic wallpapers)
It will be instantly applied as desktop wallpaper.
The Downloaded Wallpaper section of the Wallpaper Control Center:
There are other Wallpaper Control Center buttons that allow you to save and use downloaded images as wallpaper without using the Mozilla Firefox "save as wallpaper" feature detailed above.
When right clicking on an image displayed in Opera, Mozilla Firefox, or Flock web browsers, choose "save as", and the image needs to be saved to your /home/knoppix/download directory.
Then, using the various buttons in the Wallpaper Control Center Downloaded Wallpaper section, you may place the downloaded image file on your desktop as wallpaper:
Click on -> Apply Normal Size
or use one of the zoom buttons, 20% - 140% (of normal size).
This works for one downloaded image, if you have downloaded more than one, see the following, below:
Using another source for wallpaper, you do not have to use the web browsers to place images in the ~/download directory,
a collection of images on a cdrom or usb memory stick can also be used.
Use "emelFM" (file manager) to transfer an image to the ~/download directory, so the Wallpaper Control Center can be used.
Using your web browser or other source, you may save a number of images to the ~/download directory, that can be used as desktop wallpaper.
The original name of the image will be used when saving the image using a web browser, and you may change
that name if desired when the image is being saved to the /download directory.
Use the "Manage Downloaded" button in the Wallpaper Control Center to work with the downloaded wallpaper image files:
Click on -> Manage Downloaded
The file manager "emelFM" will open, with the left pane showing the contents of the ~/download directory, where you
have saved your downloaded wallpaper image files using a web browser.
You will need to move all but one to the "emelFM" right pane, using the "move" button, so only one image remains in
the ~/download directory.
Now you may use:
Click on -> Apply Normal Size
This will place the one remaining image on your desktop as wallpaper.
If you have more than one image or do not have an image in /download, the script for the "Apply Normal Size" button will tell you,
and offer to help you correct the problem.
The Downloaded Wallpaper section of the Wallpaper Control Center has two more buttons you can use:
l. Click on -> Save Downloaded.
This button copies all of the image files in ~/download to ~/.Wallpapers,
then starts "emelFM" (file manager) to allow you to select and move one image file to ~/.My_Wallpaper for use
by the Wallpaper Control Center button in the "Saved or Restored" section, "Apply Normal Size" as desktop wallpaper and then allows you to decide if you want to run the knoppix "saveconfig" application
to save the contents of both wallpaper directories for use the next time you boot up the linux system.
You are given the choice to skip the "saving" for now, but the downloaded image files are copied to ~/.Wallpapers so they can be saved later in this bootup session.
Any image file in ~/.Wallpapers or ~/.My_Wallpaper will be saved in the knoppix archive when this menu item is run in IceWM or Fluxbox:
Menu -> Admin-Tools -> Save your configuration.
2. The View Downloaded button in the Wallpaper Control Center Downloaded Wallpaper section will open a viewer application, and you can click on any image file to see it in the viewer.
How do I save the wallpaper images for use the next time I boot up the linux system?
The Saved or Restored section of the Wallpaper Control Center is designed to handle images that have been restored to the
linux system from a knoppix restoration archive created by:
Menu -> Admin-Tools -> Save your configuration.
Also, the Wallpaper Control Center button in the Downloaded Wallpaper section, "Save Downloaded" will assist the user in creating this archive and including the
wallpaper image files required.
Once the linux system is booted up and the restoration archive is included in the filesystem with the "myconfig=scan" boot-up cheatcode, then the user
is now ready to apply the saved wallpaper image file in ~/.My_Wallpaper to the desktop:
Use the Wallpaper Control Center "Saved or Restored" section button Apply Normal Size.
If necessary, use one of the provided zoom buttons to adjust the image to fit the desktop, if necessary.
Your saved wallpaper image will not automatically return to the desktop unless you click that button.
The linux system always starts with the default wallpaper image, which can be restored anytime by using the "Restore Original Wallpaper" button.
Since several wallpaper image files may have been saved in the restoration archive, and restored to ~/.Wallpapers when the system is booted up,
the Wallpaper Control Center "Saved or Restored" section button Manage Saved or Restored can be used to choose another saved image for use
as desktop wallpaper. The user will be assisted in this process by the script for the button Manage Saved or Restored.
Using Emelfm (file manager) image files are moved from ~/.Wallpapers to ~/.My_Wallpaper, one at a time, for use as desktop wallpaper:
If you have run "Save Downloaded Wallpapers", then you may have already done this.
To use each image as your wallpaper:
Click on -> "Apply Normal Size" or one of the zoom buttons, in the Wallpaper Control Center "Saved or Restored" section.
There is also a button to "View Saved" wallpaper image files in ~/.Wallpapers. Note that the one image in ~/.My_Wallpaper is not viewed by "View Saved".
When you click on "Apply Normal Size", you will see that image on the desktop, without using a viewer. If there is a problem with the image, or if there are too many
in the directory, the script for "Apply Normal Size" will notify and assist the user in fixing the problem, so the image can be successfully applied as desktop wallpaper.
If you just want to find a wallpaper image on the internet, and have saved it using your web browser, you can just:
Click on -> Apply Normal Size in the Downloaded Wallpaper Section of the Wallpaper Control Center to quickly place it on your desktop.
If you are using 1024x768 screen resolution, then the wallpaper images will need to be that size or smaller, to fit on your screen.
Images larger than that will be too big to fit on the screen, when using this button to place them on the desktop.
You may scale large images to fit on the desktop by using the various zoom buttons.
Any wallpaper image that has been placed in the ~/download directory can be scaled from 20% to 140% of original size.
A 1600x1200 wallpaper will have to be zoomed to 60% of original size to fit on a 1024x768 screen, with a small border around it.
The same thing applies to the "Saved or Restored" image file in ~/.My_Wallpaper.
Image files in ~/.Wallpapers are not applied to the desktop from that directory, they may only be viewed with the "View Saved" button.
Use the "Manage Saved or Restored" button in the Wallpaper Control Center to move files from the ~/.Wallpapers directory (one at a time) to the
~/.My_Wallpaper directory for use as desktop wallpaper, by using the "Apply Normal Size" or any of the zoom buttons in the "Saved or Restored"
section of the Wallpaper Control Center.
Access the Wallpaper Control Center in Fluxbox:
Menu -> Wallpaper -> Wallpaper Control Center.
How do I change to the Fluxbox window manager so I can use the following wallpaper information?
In IceWM:
There are two ways to change from IceWM to Fluxbox:
1. Menu -> Programs -> Window Managers -> Fluxbox.
All of your running programs will remain in place as you change to Fluxbox.
2. Menu -> Admin-Tools -> Choose/Restart Desktop
Or, click on the "C" icon on the IceWM toolbar.
It will be necessary to close all running programs before using "Choose/Restart Desktop"
Changing to the Fluxbox window manager using that method will restore the original wallpaper to the desktop, and downloaded or saved wallpaper will need to be placed on the desktop using the Wallpaper Control Center buttons.
Within Fluxbox, you may return to your "Mozilla Firefox" downloaded wallpaper anytime during this bootup session with:
Click on -> Set Firefox Wallpaper in the Wallpaper Control Center.
That button will use the /home/knoppix/Firefox_wallpaper.png image for your wallpaper.
What if I have not applied a wallpaper from the internet using Mozilla Firefox?
If you use the menu item " Set Wallpaper", you will get the default "Firefox_wallpaper.png" image,
which is a version of the default Village Wallpaper that you see when you boot the system to the desktop in IceWM.
It is also possible to open an image on a mounted USB memory stick, floppy, or hard drive partition using Mozilla Firefox, and set that image
as wallpaper as the /home/knoppix/Firefox_wallpaper.png file.
You may use emelFM (file manager) to rename any image you can access in emelFM (file manager) to "Firefox_wallpaper.png" so the " Set Firefox Wallpaper " button will work.
Reminder: be sure and delete the original "symbolic link" file named "Firefox_wallpaper.png in /home/knoppix, so you can place your new file there. (The "symbolic link" file cannot be overwritten.)
Is my "Mozilla Firefox" downloaded wallpaper saved?
No, not unless you place the downloaded "Firefox_Wallpaper.png" file in ~/.Wallpapers, so the knoppix restoration archive (discussed earlier), can include the file for use the
next time the linux system is booted.
Are the image files in ~/download saved?
No, they are lost when the linux system is shut down or rebooted.
You may use the Wallpaper Control Center "Downloaded Wallpaper" section button "Save Downloaded" to run
the script that will assist the user in saving the files in the ~/download directory.
Anytime you use "emelFM" (file manager) you can see what the image will looks like by double clicking on it, and viewing it in the viewer application "xzgv" that will start.
You may review all of the images in a directory using "emelFM" by entering "xzgv" on the "emelFM" command line.
Click on the directory pane that you wish to view, first.
Using the Scenic Wallpapers in the Wallpaper Control Center: Click on any of them to apply to the desktop.
The built-in "scenic" wallpapers are all 1024x768 , but will should work with an 800x600 screen.
Can I use any of the built-in wallpapers with the zoom feature?
They are applied at normal size.
To zoom any of them, open emelFM (file manager), and in the right pane, click on bookmarks, and select /KNOPPIX/usr/share/wallpapers.
All of the built-in wallpapers will be displayed. To view any of them, double click on the image file in emelFM, and the viewer "xzgv" will display the image.
In the left pane, click on bookmarks, and select ramdisk/home/knoppix/
Then "Copy" any of the images to the ~/.My_Wallpaper directory.
You may use the ~/download directory also.
Now, the Wallpaper Control Center zoom buttons can be used to apply the image to the desktop, zoomed as required.
It will be the same image, just placed on the desktop using a different method.
This procedure also applies if you have other wallpaper images on a USB memory stick, or in a hard drive partition.
The use of emelFM (file manager) is necessary so that you can copy one image file at a time to ~/.My_Wallpaper or to ~/download.
The zoom buttons are set to look in those directories for any image file to use for desktop wallpaper.
What will happen if I do not have an image file in ~/download, or ~/.My_Wallpaper?
The "wallpaper system" provided as of Beta 88 will detect that, notify the user, and provide assistance in fixing the problem.
If you have no other source for image files to use, you may use the Scenic wallpaper image files in /KNOPPIX/usr/share/wallpapers, and copy any of them to
the ~/download or ~/.My_Wallpaper directories to use as you explore the various features of the Wallpaper Control Center.
Here are more details on how the "wallpaper system", a collection of scripts accessed by the Wallpaper Control Center works:
There are new wallpaper-handling scripts available via the buttons on the Wallpaper Control Center.
This provides a complete "wallpaper system" to use, apply, zoom, save, check and provide safeguards for the image files in the wallpaper image directories.
For instance, there can be "Downloaded" wallpaper images, in ~/download, obtained this session.
The web browsers can save images found on the internet in the ~/download directory.
Any image to be used as wallpaper is downloaded by "right-clicking" on the image, and selecting "Save As".
Opera saves the images in ~/download by default, the other browsers, Firefox and Flock can place images in ~/download, but this is not done automatically .
These images can be used as wallpaper until the system is shut down, then they are lost.
To save the "Downloaded" wallpaper images, for use next time the linux system is booted up, there are menu
items to move the images from ~/download to special directories where they can be saved.
The wallpaper system allows saving the images in the ~/.Wallpapers and in ~/.My_Wallpaper directories.
Image files that are placed in those directories can be saved by the knoppix saveconfig, and placed in the configs.tbz file for
restoration to those directories the next time the linux system is booted up.
The wallpaper system can then place any restored image on the desktop as wallpaper.
The Wallpaper Control Center has buttons to allow the user to apply restored images, in the "Saved or Restored" section.
How do the downloaded wallpapers get "saved"?
The user is given a choice to run the knoppix saveconfig application as the wallpaper images in ~/download are moved to
the ~/.Wallpapers directory by the wallpaper system. The "Save Downloaded" button on the Wallpaper Control Center does that.
Working outside of the Wallpaper System, the "knoppix saveconfig" application is found here:
Menu -> Admin-Tools -> Save your configuration.
To restore, use the knoppix cheatcode "myconfig=scan" at the boot prompt.
Safeguards are provided by the wallpaper system to prevent multiple images from being used at one time, and to provide assistance in the event that there is
an error. If a wallpaper directory does not have an image that can be used, or has too many images, the user is notified, and provided with a way to fix the problem.
Then the wallpaper-handling system will recheck the directories, and if the problem has been corrected, the wallpaper image can be applied to the desktop.
In all cases where the wallpaper image is to be applied "normal size", or 100% size, the Wallpaper System as accessed by the Wallpaper Control Center,
provide full assistance to the user in the event that a wallpaper image cannot be used. When using "zoom" buttons, the system only reports that there is a problem, with some details.
In that event, use of the "Apply Normal Size" buttons will allow additional assistance to be provided to fix the problem, and allow the wallpaper image to be applied to the desktop.
In all cases, if a new wallpaper image cannot be applied, the current wallpaper is left in place.
The wallpaper problems that are detected are:
See the section below on the Background Color Changer to set a particular color as desktop background, instead of an image.
Wallpaper when using the KDE window manager:
If you switch to the KDE window manager from either Fluxbox or IceWM, and have set
a downloaded wallpaper using the Firefox_wallpaper.png image while in Fluxbox or IceWM,
then KDE will use it, instead of the default wallpaper.
Normally, KDE uses whatever image is /home/knoppix/Firefox_wallpaper.png by the time KDE places the desktop icons and sets the wallpaper.
It is necessary, therefore, to always have a "~/Firefox_wallpaper.png" available for use by KDE.
One has been placed in the remaster to satisfy this requirement of KDE.
As of Beta 94, this is a symbolic link, and cannot be overwritten.
To do that, delete the symbolic link file using the file manager, "emelFM".
If the "Firefox_wallpaper.png" image is still the default image, and has not been changed to one from the web, then KDE will use that one.
While KDE loads, it will temporarily use the Rapidweather Village wallpaper then switch to the one provided in the "Firefox_wallpaper.png" file.
In review:
To use a new downloaded wallpaper while in KDE, you will have to:
What happens to my Firefox KDE downloaded wallpaper if I change window managers to Fluxbox, or IceWM?
Those window managers use the default Rapidweather Village wallpaper, and you will have to set the wallpaper
once again using the Wallpaper Control Center, which is available only in IceWM or Fluxbox, not KDE.
If you return to the KDE window manager, the Firefox-downloaded wallpaper will again be used by KDE, as long as the key file, Firefox_wallpaper.png is still there.
Your "Firefox_wallpaper.png" wallpaper image file downloaded using Mozilla Firefox is not saved when you power down your linux system
unless you use the wallpaper saving features provided in the Wallpaper Control Center in IceWM or Fluxbox, or use the "persistent home directory":
Menu -> Programs -> Knoppix -> Config -> Create a persistent Knoppix home directory.
Rather than set up a persistent home directory, you may want to keep some of these downloaded wallpapers on external media, such as a floppy, USB memory stick or hard drive partition if you have a lot of these files.
See "Saving Your Home Directory" above.
What about using KDE with images that were saved by the Wallpaper Control Center in IceWM or Fluxbox?
When you change to the KDE window manager, you may run slideshows of the wallpaper images in ~/.Wallpapers.
These images will need to be saved in your "configs.tbz" file for use every time you boot up the linux cd with the knoppix cheatcode:
"myconfig=scan".
You may use the Wallpaper Control Center to save downloaded images to the "configs.tbz" file so they can be used the next time the linux cd is booted.
There is a button provided, marked "Save Downloaded" .
(The Wallpaper Control Center is only for use in IceWM or Fluxbox, not KDE.)
For the "Firefox_wallpaper.png" wallpaper image file, you will need to copy it to ~/.Wallpapers so it can be saved for use the next time the linux cd system is booted.
All of the image files in ~/.Wallpapers are also saved when "Menu -> Admin Tools -> Save your configuration" is run, and creates the "configs.tbz" file.
There is a desktop icon in KDE for "Save your Configuration" that will do that from within KDE.
Only wallpaper image files in ~/.Wallpapers and ~/.My_Wallpaper are saved when "Save your Configuration" is run. Image files in ~/download are not saved.
How do I use my Downloaded or Saved or Restored wallpaper images in the KDE window manager?
Downloaded and Saved or Restored wallpaper images are accessable when using KDE.
Here is how to access them in KDE:
The Saved or Restored wallpaper images are in ~/.Wallpapers and ~/.My_Wallpaper, these are "hidden" directories.
Right-Click on the KDE desktop, and select "Configure Desktop", then "Background".
Click on the little blue "file folder" in the "Background" section. Press "F8" to show the "hidden" directories.
The ~/download directory will also be accessable at this point, and you can use wallpaper images that have been placed there when saved by a web browser.
If you have "saved or restored" wallpaper images in ~/.Wallpapers and ~/.My_Wallpaper, you can then select either directory and click on a
wallpaper image file. It will be displayed for you in the "Configure Desktop" monitor, and you can apply the image to the desktop with a variety of options.
You may use the "Slide Show" option, and use the contents of any directory, including ~/download and ~/.Wallpapers for a desktop slide show.
The KDE desktop icons may cover your wallpaper image, you can re-arrange the icons, but not hide them in KDE. For that reason, you may want to use
IceWM or Fluxbox when using desktop wallpaper, there are no desktop icons, and the menu does not appear on the desktop until you right-click on the desktop.
How do I get to the KDE window manager?
In IceWM, click on the "C" on the toolbar, and then select "KDE". Your desktop will restart, and after a short while, KDE will be your new desktop.
The Wallpaper Control Center is not available for use within KDE, but files that have been placed in the various wallpaper directories
when using the Wallpaper Control Center in IceWM or Fluxbox are accessable in KDE as described above.
More Wallpaper notes:
Normally, your system will always boot with the default Rapidweather Village wallpaper, and you may change it to one from the Web
using Mozilla Firefox's "Save as Desktop Background" feature, or download it to ~/download, and use the Wallpaper Control Center in IceWM or Fluxbox.
If you save an image using Mozilla Firefox, the image is always saved in the root of your home directory as "Firefox_wallpaper.png", and you can only have one at a time.
Look in /home/knoppix/ for "Firefox_wallpaper.png", using emelFM. It will appear at the bottom of the list of home directory files and directories.
To see what
the "Firefox_wallpaper.png" file looks like, just double-click on it in emelFM, and the "xzgv" viewer will display it in a window.
You may also use the program "KuickShow" on the IceWM "Graphics" menu next to GIMP, to view stored images, and once an image is being displayed by KuickShow,
right click anywhere on the image, and you have the option to "save as", then save the image file as "/home/knoppix/Firefox_wallpaper.png". Once that is done, you
may then install the wallpaper on your desktop by using the Wallpaper Control Center -> Set Firefox Wallpaper.
KuickShow, a fast and versatile image viewer, can run a slideshow of the images you have in a directory, allowing you to quickly review them.
Start KuickShow using the IceWM or Fluxbox menus:
Menu -> Graphics -> KuickShow.
KuickShow is a very fast image viewer, able to present large images quickly.
Note:
If you have any problem getting any KDE application to run, click on Menu -> Admin-Tools -> KDE Boot Fix.
Then try the application again.
There has been a problem with some KDE applications that are run as "root", in that they reset the owner/group of the "authority file" to "root", instead of
"knoppix" when these applications are run in IceWM or Fluxbox, using the configuration provided in this remaster.
After the applications are closed, the owner/group of the authority file (~/.ICEauthority) remained "root", blocking any other KDE program that normally runs as owner/group "knoppix".
This problem has been fixed, for the most part, in Beta 87, and in Beta 89A.
In Beta 95, all of the control scripts for the KDE programs shown below have been rewritten.
Any of the six KDE applications listed below can now be closed, and the authority file is automatically reset to owner/group knoppix.
When any of these applications is closed, the user will see a "countdown timer" that allows the system to wait until KDE is ready to have the authority file reset.
There is nothing that needs to be done while the 50 second timer is running, at the end of the countdown, the authority file will have been reset, and another KDE application may be
safely started, or the user may at this time change window managers from IceWM to KDE if so desired. If the user has other work to do on the system, just change desktops and continue, the
countdown timer can be ignored.
The system resetting the authority file is necessary when running IceWM or Fluxbox, so a subsequent change to the KDE window manager will be sucessful, as will the running of any of the other KDE applications at this time.
As of Beta 87, KDE applications running in IceWM as "root" now have control scripts to reset the owner and group of the authority file to "knoppix" when they exit.
The KDE Programs/Applications are:
1. KDEPrint, printing manager.
2. KDE System Guard Process Table
3. Guarddog Firewall interface
4. K3B CD burner.
5. KuickShow. (As of Beta 89A)
6. Kmix (As of Beta 95)
These KDE applications are accessable in the IceWM and Fluxbox menus.
As of Beta 89A, KuickShow is run within a control script as described above, and will start with the entire /home/knoppix directory displayed.
The user will need to navigate to the directory where KuickShow will find image files to display.
All of the above listed applications are run as the root user and normally would set the authority file to "root" owner/group when run.
The new control scripts reset the ownership of the authority file when the applications exit.
Also, the program "KDE Boot Fix" has been added to the "Admin-Tools" menu to manually reset the authority file to owner/group "knoppix", allowing
any non-root KDE programs to run while any of the above programs are open.
This fixes the problem of KDE applications such as
Kate, Kwrite, and Konqueror failing to start when the above applications are running, or have been run in this session.
"KDE Boot Fix" is easy to use, just click on it in the menu, and only takes a couple of seconds to run.
The authority file is "~/.ICEauthority" and can block booting of some KDE programs if it is set to "root" owner/group by an application run as "root" user.
The emelFM file manager uses "xzgv" to view images in any directory, if you double click on any one of them.
An xzgv viewer window will open with the image, and you may want to close it before opening another one.
You can copy an image to your home directory and rename it using emelFM to "Firefox_wallpaper.png" to use it for your desktop wallpaper, with:
Wallpaper Control Center -> Set Firefox Wallpaper.
(In IceWM or Fluxbox window managers)
The Wallpaper menu item, "clean memory" can be used if you have set
the wallpaper a few times.
This will close the application used to set your wallpaper each time.
This item is available in the Wallpaper Control Center.
There is an application provided to allow you to have a background color of your choice, instead
of a wallpaper:
Menu -> Wallpaper ->Background Color Changer.
(In IceWM or Fluxbox window managers)
Using the sliders, you can preview your new background color before applying it.
In the default window manager IceWM, you may change to another mouse cursor theme
and retain the new background color as your restart IceWM to apply the theme.
When you are using the Fluxbox window manager, or KDE, then the following applies:
Should you restart your desktop as you apply a new mouse cursor theme,
the color may not reappear, and will have to be reset using the Background Color Changer.
When you restart your desktop, the default background image will reappear in the place of the background color.
The choice of a background color instead of an image for the background makes it easier to see the menus in Fluxbox and Icewm.
Changing back to the default theme (7) will recover the /ramdisk memory by deleting the ~/.icons directory.
Changing Mouse Cursor Themes:
When you are in the default window manager IceWM, the default mouse cursor theme can be changed:
There is a button on the IceWM taskbar, "Mouse Cursor Theme Selector" [M].
Use that to select from any of the seven mouse cursor themes.
(To see a sample of how the various themes will appear, click on the "View All" button on the "Mouse Cursor Theme Selector" interface. )
Once one has been selected, click on the Black X button [X] on the taskbar to apply the mouse cursor theme.
When you use the mouse cursor theme selector to install a cursor theme, there will be a message appearing on the desktop asking you to click the [X] button.
You may click OK on the message to close it, or it will automatically close after 20 seconds.
You may click on the [X] anytime to apply the theme.
It will also be necessary to close all running programs, such as Mozilla Firefox,
and reopen them to have the new mouse cursor theme appear throughout all applications in IceWM.
The taskbar autohides at the bottom of the screen, move your mouse cursor to the bottom of the screen to
bring up the taskbar, so you can locate the [M] and [X].
The menu (Start Button) also has all of the cursor theme selection items, just right-click anywhere on the desktop to bring up the menu.
Menu -> Extras -> Cursor Themes.
All six of the above cursor themes in "Mouse Cursor Theme Selector" are also available in the Cursor Themes section of the Menu.
The "Lila" theme has three colors, Red, White, and Black.
You are able, then, to get the White and Black "Lila" theme cursors via the menu. They are not included in the cursor selector.
As mentioned above, once any theme is selected, you will need to restart the window manager to apply the new mouse cursor theme.
Use either the Black X button [X] on the taskbar, or on the menu to do that.
The new mouse cursor theme will then be applied to the system after you restart the IceWM desktop.
You may switch between all of the cursor themes to see which one you like.
Should you have any open applications when you are changing cursor themes, the applications should be closed and restarted, so the new cursor theme will be used throughout your desktops and applications.
Otherwise, you may get a mixture of cursor themes, depending on which application was running when you changed cursor themes.
Should you want to keep a theme as your default when you next boot up your linux system, you will need to save your knoppix configuration.
Menu -> Admin -> Save Knoppix Configuration.
Follow the prompts to choose a location where your configuration will be saved.
On that note, if you switch window managers, from IceWM (default) to Fluxbox, or KDE, then when you save your configuration,
that window manager, and cursor theme will return when you restore on bootup with "myconfig=scan".
You may want to change a mouse cursor theme in the default IceWM window manager prior to changing to another window manager.
Taskbar -> [C]
Clicking on the [C] on the Taskbar will start the "Knoppix X-Restart" dialog, where you can change window managers.
Your mouse cursor theme choice will be used when the new window manager's desktop appears.
Also, you may change mouse cursor themes while in the Fluxbox window manager, from the cursor menu items in "Extras".
The "Mouse Cursor Theme Selector" is not yet available in the Fluxbox window manager.
In Fluxbox, the "X-Server" is restarted to apply the new mouse cursor theme. The same is true in KDE.
This is a little different than just restarting the desktop in iceWM. The screen will go black while the "X-Server" restarts.
In KDE, there is a desktop icon to switch to the Contrast Large cursor theme.
All of your running programs will need to be closed prior to changing cursor themes in KDE or Fluxbox.
During the process, a prompt is provided to give you an opportunity to do that.
The new mouse cursor theme will be used when the desktop returns after the "X-server" restart.
In the default window manager IceWM, the "X-server" is not restarted when the mouse cursor theme is
changed via the menu. That happens only in KDE, and Fluxbox.
For use in the IceWM and Fluxbox window managers there is a selection of black-colored precision root window mouse cursors:
Menu -> Extras -> Precision Cursors.
There are three sizes.
These cursors are black with a thin white outline, unlike the "white-with-black-outline " Contrast Large or Default cursors.
These Precision cursors do not appear in all windows and applications, or replace the standard cursor theme. You may want to try them, but be advised that your cursor will then have two appearances or forms, depending on where the cursor is positioned.
The menu-selected precision cursors do provide additional accuracy in some applications, and in working with the menu itself on the desktop.
In the Fluxbox window manager, you may "tear-off" the "Cursors" part of the menu, and easily cycle between the three Precision cursor sizes to determine which one you want.
The precision cursors are not complete cursor themes, and will take only one form.
Also, these cursors do not appear globally throughout the window manager, like theme cursors do.
If you switch window managers, any Precision Cursor that you have will not return to the new desktop.
It will be necessary to select it again from the IceWM or Fluxbox menu.
The mouse cursor theme "Contrast-Large" is recommended for use with Gimp.
In the Fluxbox Window Manager, the Cat and Dog mouse cursor enhancements are available:
Menu -> Extras -> Cat/Dog Cursors.
It is possible to start one of each, so you have a cat and a dog chasing
your cursor around. If you stop these cursors, The basic X cursor returns, and you will need to reset one of the Theme
cursors to have a normal mouse cursor.
Theme cursors are able to change into many forms, and provide something
interesting to watch while you work at your computer.
With the generous selection of cursors available, you are sure to find one that is your favorite.
Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux is the only livecd linux with a selection of mouse cursor themes, that can easily be applied to
the running system.
Be sure and use the "View All" button on the "Mouse Cursor Theme Selector" to see a sample of each
mouse cursor theme.
IceWM toolbar -> [M].
The Flock web browser is upgraded from Version 0.7.6 to Version 0.7.8.
Flock is based on Firefox 1.5.0.8, build 20061109.
For further information on Flock, visit the Flock 0.7.8 Release Notes page.
Security and Privacy:
In the Remaster, the Flock web browser is protected by a control script that deletes the entire Flock home directory when the browser is closed by the user.
Flock can retain the user's search data in the Flock home directory (~/.flock) after the browser is closed.
Even though Flock is configured to clear all private data on exit, this additional step is necessary to provide an additional level of privacy protection.
The Remaster also uses browser control scripts for Mozilla Firefox and Opera.
In addition to providing security and privacy, the control scripts release the /ramdisk memory used by the browsers when they are closed.
These control scripts are unique to Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux.
Here are the technical details about Firefox:
By default, the remaster will not enable the "downloaded list of suspected phishing sites" in Firefox. 2.0
The intent here is to compare the site visited to the list, to have Firefox warn the user if a fake site is being viewed.
Phishing sites are fake websites, designed to look exactly like the original, and the web surfer is usually directed to the fake site by a link in an e-mail, or may have come across the fake site when surfing the web, perhaps by slightly mis-spelling a URL.
Firefox users with broadband, and a hard drive installed operating system should have no problem handling these "suspected phishing sites" files on their systems.
A livecd linux such as this one, however, would probably need to disable this Firefox preference, so the available RAM installed on the computer will be sufficient to run the operating system and applications.
The files required for ~/.mozilla to support this security feature have been determined to be too large for a livecd linux that needs to run satisfactorily on machines with only 128 MB of RAM.
These "fake sites" files will use /ramdisk space, and require more bandwidth to download, over normal web use bandwidth requirements. This will affect the dial-up users more.
It is possible that over time, these files can only grow larger, to include more suspect phishing sites.
Some background:
The remaster uses browser control scripts that delete any home directories for the web browsers, namely ~/.mozilla, ~/.flock and ~/.opera when the browsers are closed, this is done for security reasons.
This, then, requires the browser to download the fake site files each time Firefox is started.
The normal toolbar icons and internet menu items for the browsers use these control scripts to run the web browsers.
There are special steps that advanced users can take to change the remaster's defaults for any of the web browsers.
An advanced user can enable any Firefox preference, such as the one for the Phishing sites files, if desired, especially if a "persistent home directory" is being used for /ramdisk.
The "knoppix.img" file for the "persistent home directory" should be over 1 GB in size, on a spare hard drive partition.
Most users of a livecd linux will not be using a "persistent home directory", hence the decision to disable this particular Firefox security feature by default.
The other alternative that Mozilla Firefox offers is to check each site the user visits using a Google database.
If desired, any user may enable this perference for the current web browsing session.
For advanced users, any changes to Firefox preferences that are made will be automatically saved when a "persistent home directory" is used.
In prior Beta builds, the NoScript extension to Mozilla Firefox has been built-in. For Beta 105, the user will have to download and install the NoScript extension
if desired, it has been left out of the remaster. With NoScript, the average user of Firefox would be required to manually allow javascript for each web site visited, for all features of the page to work properly.
This became somewhat of a chore, so Mozilla Firefox 2.0 in Beta 105 does not have NoScript installed, by default.
It is possible to allow all javascript in web pages with NoScript, this one-time action would have to be done by the user for each session.
Important Note, for advanced users:
When using a "persistent home directory", and when customizing any of the three web browsers, Firefox, Flock, or Opera, the user must then use the alternate web browser menu to start the browser:
(In IceWM) Menu -> Extras -> Web Browsers -> (Choose between Firefox, Flock, or Opera).
Then the personalized version of the browser, as obtained from the "persistent home directory" will be used. Any extensions or other changes to Mozilla Firefox, for instance, will appear when using the alternate web browser menu.
Caution: If the normal toolbar icons for any of these browsers is used, then the default remaster configuration for the browser will appear. At that point, the users custom configuration that may be active in the
"persistent home directory" will no longer be valid, and would be overwritten, and cannot be recovered.
Normally, the use of a "persistent home directory" is done by advanced users able to take the extra step needed to override the default remaster settings for any of the web browsers.
Additional information for advanced users may be obtained at the Blog.
The average user will simply be using the default remaster configuration for the web browsers as contained in the CD.
The Flock web browser is upgraded from Version 0.7.4.1 to Version 0.7.5.1
Flock is based on Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.7, with additional features.
For those users wanting to run a Persistent Home Directory in a hard drive partition, the three web browsers
can be run without the control scripts in place by using Menu -> Extras -> Web Browsers menu to start Mozilla Firefox, Opera or Flock
without any Rapidweather Remaster default configuration. The browsers will need to be configured by the user for all settings, including selection of home page.
For instance, Mozilla Firefox will then start with the default Mozilla settings and preferences, and will have to be customized by the user.
Examples would be the default font, the "home" page, and other settings found in "edit -> preferences".
The user will have to add any extensions desired, such as NoScript, and RSS feeds will also have to be added.
When a "persistant home directory" is run, usually with the knoppix cheatcode "home=scan" when the system is booted up, then all of the users changes to Mozilla Firefox will be saved from session to session.
The user must always start Mozilla Firefox from the Menu -> Extras -> Web Browsers menu to prevent default Rapidweather configuration from overwriting the users custom settings for Firefox, as contained in the Persistent Home Directory (knoppix.img).
(The Menu -> Extras -> Web Browsers menu is available in the IceWM window manager only)
The built-in RSS feeds for Opera 9.01 have been updated.
The Tab Window Manager now has a "Favorites" section near the top of the menu:
Main Menu -> Debian -> Favorites.
Here you will find a selection of 12 useful applications.
The first menu entry is a "root shell", provided so other applications can be run in the Tab Window Manager.
The Tab Window Manager uses very little system resources compared to the other window managers.
This is important when running some applications on an older computer with a slower processor.
The built-in web browser start page, "web.html" has been updated to version 4.74.
This is a local copy of the web.html page on the internet.
The Search Area in "web.html" has been rebuilt, with the addition of Ask.com search, and the deletion of out-of-date search engines.
When will the Beta Version Series become 0.1?
Although these Beta builds are entirely useful as is, there is no set timetable for declaring the remaster a Version 0.1
Not right away, at least.
A lot of ideas are being incorporated into the remaster, and the Beta Versions are the way
the builds are identified for the time being. Each time a build is made, testing begins immediately,
and changes and improvements are worked into the next build.
Just want to get everything working in an acceptable and useful way before declaring the
build is "Version 0.1".
For instance, Beta 56 has yet another mouse cursor theme, from KDE-look.org
There are now a total of seven different ones. They are all larger than the default cursor theme in Knoppix 3.4,
and are designed to be used with laptop screens as well as larger CRT and LCD desktop screens.
My favorite for use on laptop screens is Sceptre a large transparent theme.
Current plans are for several more Beta builds to be made over time.
Beta 100 has been made to update Firefox to
version 2.0b2.
Beta 62 added the Station Selector, used with XMMS to tune in internet radio stations.
Beta 64 adds the Internet Dialer Interface for Wvdial, for use with Icewm ,Fluxbox and KDE.
Also, the Mouse Cursor Selector, new in Beta 64.
Beta 65 adds a WvDial setup interface.
Beta 66 has improvements to these interfaces, and the scripts that are run by them.
Beta 89A introduces the Wallpaper Control Center.
(These interfaces were written using Tcl-Tk. )
Beta 76C adds Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5, rc1 E-Mail, very easy to configure and use. (This has now been upgraded to 1.5.0.6 as of Beta 96)
Beta 75 adds the Flock web browser, now upgraded to version 0.4.10 in Beta76C. (This has now been upgraded to 0.7.6 as of Beta 106)
Beta 76D adds the new Mozilla Firefox 1.5 rc2 web browser. (This has now been upgraded to 2.0rc3 as of Beta 107)
By the time Beta 85 rolls around, all of the web browsers have been upgraded, and browser control scripts have been added to
reduce /ramdisk useage and improve security for the Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Flock web browsers.
Opera has "crash-proof" protection, as of Beta 88.
Both Opera and Flock web browsers delete their entire home directory files when they exit, so no trace of online activity remains in the running linux system.
Either browser can be restarted with a basic configuration at any time.
See the Opera section of this Guide for more details on how Opera handles security.
Efforts to reduce default /ramdisk useage has been successful:
On a 256 MB RAM computer, the /ramdisk is only 2% used, even with KDE running.
The Guarddog firewall has been added, and is preconfigured for web surfing, ftp and e-mail use.
It is not necessary for the user to start up the Guarddog interface unless changes to the firewall need to be made.
Beta 89A introduces version 0.2 of a set of scripts to handle the startup and shutdown of certain KDE applications,
that are run as root to handle the tasks the user expects of them, without undue "error messages".
These applications are: Guarddog Firewall, KDEPrint, K3B, KuickShow, and KDE System Guard Process Table.
Beta 95 adds Kmix, and all control scripts were rewritten, they are now version 0.3.
See the What's New? section for current additions, and the What's New Archives for a changelog of prior changes and additions.
The iso is now about 492 MB, and many of the original Knoppix 3.4 applications and debian packages have been either removed or upgraded.
In the process of that, many support libraries are also upgraded when the remaster is in a chroot environment, and connected to
the Debian servers while using "apt-get".
Additional Debian packages will be removed or upgraded in the future, as necessary.
I would like to be able to get the iso down to a more reasonable size, so the CD can be loaded into memory with the
knoppix cheatcode "toram".
As it is now, tests on a 1 GB machine using "toram" work well, and speed things up as compared to
just running off the cdrom drive.
A lot of computers come with 512 MB of memory, and it would be useful to be able to use
"toram" on those machines also.
Most of the time, I run the linux system from the hard drive, having used this knoppix cheatcode the first time I run from the CD:
boot: knoppix tohd=/dev/hda1 (This is an example, using hard drive partition 1)
For one of my machines, I use "hdd7".
So, to run from this "copied" linux system, I boot up the system with the CD, and at the boot prompt:
boot: knoppix fromhd=/dev/hdd7
Running from the hard drive is not "installing" to the hard drive, it is still necessary to "bootstrap" the system with the CD.
When you run your system like this, it is not only very fast compared to running directly from the CD, it is quiet.
The hard drive does not run nearly as hard as it would with Windows 98 or XP, for instance.
This is the way to go, but it requires that you have a partitioned hard drive, something you can do with QTParted, found in "Admin-Tools".
Do not try and partition a Windows XP hard drive with QTParted, it is best to add a second hard drive for this purpose.
While you are at it, set up a "swap" partition on the second hard drive, for use by linux. QTParted can do all of that for you.
If you are viewing this document on the web, and would like to see screenshots of Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux in action, go here:
http://www.rapidweather.com/linuxcdsales.html
In addition to the screenshots, you will find information on buying a CD of the latest Beta Build of Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux.
Lots of current information concerning the remaster is at the Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux Blog.
There, you will find the mailing address where you can directly order a CD, and have it sent to you by USPS express mail. (You'll have your CD quick!)
Please stay tuned for futher developments!
