KNOPPIX+LKB

News

08-MAY-2009: Version 7 is out. Based on some user feedback I've added a few new features in this release:

• Trollet, Pavel Mihaylov's alternative LKB frontend.
• Pavel Mihaylov's alternative, Pango-enabled LUI. This has been installed as "pangolui", as recommended on LkbLui. Issue (lui-initialize :lui "pangolui") at the LKB: prompt to load. This LUI is intended to offer better support for non-English character sets.
• Basic Thai language support, in the form of Thai fonts and a Thai SCIM input method. This is probably still not complete, but may be enough to do basic work in the language.

30-APR-2009: I just upgraded to VirtualBox 2.2.2, and it appears to have fixed whatever was preventing LKB from working, at least under MacOS. VirtualBox is free for academic and personal use, and may prove more convenient for some of you than rebooting to run Knoppix+LKB. Indeed, I use it heavily for Knoppix+LKB development and remastering. To boot Knoppix+LKB in VirtualBox, configure it for Linux and connect the Knoppix+LKB ISO image to the virtual machine's CD-ROM drive.

29-APR-2009: Version 6 is out. This release fixes the missing /home/knoppix/tmp directory in version 5, and updates the LKB version to 2009-04-27. I've also removed some unneeded archive files from the LKB installation, shrinking the CD image by about 40 megabytes.

27-APR-2009: Version 5 is out. A request for Korean fonts prompted me to begin adding proper foreign language support:

• The default locale is now "en_US.UTF-8" instead of "C".
• SCIM is now included. Currently the only input methods on the CD are English, Hangul, and Raw Code, but I can easily add more as needed.
• The ttf-unfonts package has been installed to provide Korean font support.

Note: There is a bug in this version; LKB may complain about /home/knoppix/tmp not being writable when loading a grammar. I will do another release to fix this soon, but in the mean time, just open a terminal and do "mkdir tmp". I think this bug was actually introduced in Version 4, but I didn't notice it until now.

17-MAR-2009:Version 4 is out. This is a complete rebuild based on Knoppix v6.0.1. It features greatly improved hardware support, especially for laptops, and a new lightweight desktop manager. Boot time has also been reduced significantly (by about 1 minute on my test system.)

Because of the new desktop manager, the user interface has changed somewhat. After booting the new version, please click the Usage Notes.html file for details.

Overview

KNOPPIX+LKB is a bootable Linux live CD intended to make it easier for students to run LKB on their own computers. It requires no hard disk installation to run. It's similar in concept to Grammix, but defaults to English and contains somewhat more recent software.

Please send comments and suggestions to linghelp@u.washington.edu.

What's on it?

• Emacs version 22
• LKB (version 2009/04/27)
• Trollet and the alternate Pango-enabled LUI that goes with it (installed as "pangolui")
• svn
• scim, scim-hangul, scim-thai
• Everything normally included in Knoppix, except for OpenOffice.org and GIMP, which had to be removed for space reasons.

System requirements

To boot the CD, you need at least the following:

• An Intel-compatible CPU, i486 or better (including Intel Macs)
• An SVGA-compatible graphics card
• A serial, PS/2, or USB mouse
• The ability to boot from CD.

To run the LKB, you will probably need 256 megabytes of RAM. For complex grammars you may need 512 megabytes or more, or you may need to create a swap file.

To save your files you'll need one of the following: a working Internet connection, a USB memory stick, or a hard disk partition Knoppix can recognize.

Getting KNOPPIX+LKB

Visit the download directory and download the .iso file, or the .torrent file if you would prefer a BitTorrent download. There are also checksum files (ending in .md5 and .sha1) if you'd like to check the integrity of your download.

Some people have reported that downloads from the server linked above stop before they're complete. If you're having problems, try the alternate site instead. This site also has an archive of older versions.

The .iso is a bootable CD image; do NOT just copy it to a CD. If you're running Windows, you should use something like ISO Recorder to burn the image. If you're using a Mac, you should double-click the .iso file to open it, then run Disk Utility, select the .iso file, and click Burn.

The image is approximately 593 megabytes. It should fit on any standard-size CD-R blank.

Using KNOPPIX+LKB

Boot the CD. If you have a Windows machine, you may need to change your BIOS configuration to boot from CD; try it first, though, it may just work. If you have a Dell system, tapping F12 during the Dell boot screen may pop up a menu that will let you select a boot device. Intel Mac users should press and hold the C key when they hear the power-on chime.

When the CD finishes booting, click the Usage Notes.html file on the desktop for more information.

Media Check

If you have trouble with the live CD failing partway through the boot process, or some software fails to load, you should make sure your burned copy isn't damaged. To do this, boot the CD and type knoppix testcd at the "boot:" prompt.

Known Issues

• /home/knoppix/tmp is missing, causing an error when loading a grammar into LKB. This will be fixed in version 6; in the mean time, a workaround is to open a terminal and run "mkdir tmp" before starting work. (Fixed in Version 6.)
• Because of a conflict between SCIM and [incr_tsdb()], input method switching does not work inside the itsdb podium.
• Due to limited space on the CD, not all foreign language fonts and input methods are loaded. However, if you need one that's not on there, let me know; I can probably squeeze it in. Currently Korean and Thai are supported.
• If the CD is run from within VirtualBox, LKB fails to finish loading. This is also true of Grammix; there seems to be some kind of interaction between LISP and VirtualBox. (Seems to be fixed in VirtualBox 2.2.2.)

-- brodbd - 08 May 2009