Josh Kennedy’s general blog

Hello
Well there is an update to knoppix-adrianne. I will paste all information below.

—– Original Message —–
From: Klaus Knopper
To: Josh ; Mike
Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2010 10:44 AM
Subject: Knoppix 6.2.1 ADRIANE beta

Hello Josh and Mike (probably not knowing each other yet),

Please find the current development version of knoppix-adriane at

sorry I cannot give the url it is Klauus’s own server. If anyone has an ftp site where I can upload the knoppix-adriane beta with latest orca and hardware support please let me know.
Changes to 6.2:
- Kernel 2.6.32.2
- speechd uses libao/alsa instead of oss
- ocropus ocr version 0.3 (used by adriane-ocr)
- new network-manager configuration in “settings” (Internet)
- general updates of Debian packages
- probably more, that I forgot.
Please let me know if you get along with the new adriane network setup.
Short summary of usage of knoppix-networkmanager:
The first menu displays all connections configured in
/etc/network/interfaces (you may want to copy your existing
/etc/network/interfaces over the almost empty version in the live
system first). On top of the list is a general connection information,
on bottom an entry which allows you to configure a new connection.
When selecting an existing entry (if there is one), you get a menu with
all configured options, and when selecting one, you can edit it. You
will be asked for saving confirmation when leaving the connection
editor, while renaming works without confirmation.
Currently, only LAN and WLAN connections (wpa, wep or open) can be
configured with this tool, the “modem” entry currently does nothing, but
will also be used for broadband cable or mobile modems in later
versions.

With kind regards
-Klaus Knopper

HEllo Josh,

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 08:57:15PM -0500, Josh wrote:
> Hi,
>
> How fast does the processor have to be to run knoppix-adriane?

It should work on any processor starting from i486, provided that there
is enough RAM for programs to run. Processor speed does not really
matter, it’s rather the instruction set. The Knoppix kernel is compiled
in 386 compatibility mode, just the Debian libraries require the
instruction set of a 486 and higher.

We have run Adriane with a Pentium 1 at 200 MBz speed, which was still
fast enough for realtime speech synthesis. If using viavoice or other
more complex speech synthesizers instead of espeak, you probably need
something like Pentium III with 600 MHz or more.

The official specs for Knoppix claim that 120 MB are still OK for
textmode, and for graphical mode 500 MB of RAM should be installed.

For input devices, the old 5-pin AT keyboard, PS/2 and USB keyboards or
mice are all OK. Bluetooth or serial/USB connection for braille devices
are also supported.

For compiz-fusions zoom and colorblind features, you need a “not too
new” ATI/Radeon or a cheak onboard Intel graphics chipset. For using
compiz with NVidia, installation of the proprietary driver is necessary.

Do you need more specs, or want to know something specific?

Regards
-Klaus
Hi Josh,

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 10:28:32AM -0500, Josh wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In the next version of knoppix and knoppix-adriane, could you use debian squeeze or debian unstable to keep up with the latest kernel and hardware support?

I believe I have not answered this yet, just my answer on the orca list
may point in the direction. Knoppix uses the currentmost (at release
tie) www.kernel.org kernel, not the kernel-package in Debian, so
hardware support is quite independent of what Debians kernel is
configured to support. I only compile and add the free broadcom-sta and
kqemu/virtualbox modules, everthing else is unchanged.

So, the state of hardware support is just what’s available at release
time, and independent from other Debian packages.

Is there a specific hardware that’s missing or does not work for you?
For scanners or some wireless cards, there may be firmware that has to
be copied to the system first. Firmware-less scanners were quite popular
(because they are cheap) a while ago, but they require extra work by the
user for copying the firmware to /lib/firmware prior to connecting the
device, therefore they are not very popular on Linux.

Regards
-Klaus