Knoppix - systemD free again!

[PDP-8]

KNOPPIX 9.1 released to mirrors..

Oh wow, instead of a SysV init, looks like Klaus went to a busybox init now!

I started looking around when I tried to issue the standard "cal" and it didn't fire up.  So I used busybox cal, which I knew should be there and worked.  So I started probing around and saw the busybox init!  Nice choice!  Although Busybox is version 1.30.1.

I'm not a init-startup guru, so not sure if he's applied special tweaks beyond the usual...

GCC 10.2.1, and Kernel 5.10.10 - those interested can look all that up.

I noticed that possibly to cram in more stuff and save space, only the Terminator terminal was present, so it was easy for me to manually install LxTerminal, URxvt, and Sakura or even xterm/aterm to play around since I haven't warmed up to Terminator.  No big deal.

Menu's of course are packed, but for a swiss-army-knife, and not your usual "distro", it's easy to right click and make desktop icon launchers or put them in their own folders if you want more organization.

Of course, look at the desktop-cheats file, which gets updated from time to time.

The standard remaster tool includes a new option to build a "small" cd-sized burn lacking libre-office and a lot of other stuff for those who wanted a small(er) type of environment.

For that, I use TinyCore of course - but we're talking apples and oranges so it's not worthy to discuss.

Anyway, just some notes and am grateful that Klaus hasn't gotten too bored with the project, so kudos for that.  Just like the TC devs - many thanks for keeping it going!

[Leee]

It's been a year and half or two years, so maybe a new version has fixed the issue, but the only time I've ever seen -any- terminal program actually crash, it was terminator, running on Ubuntu.  Of course the main reason I was using terminator was to have a -bunch- of session all doing stuff, so it was extra annoying.

Even though it only happened one time, I wouldn't want terminator to be my only terminal program because I never did figure out -why- it crashed.  I'm no longer in that particular line of work, and none of my current use cases call for terminator (nor Ubuntu nor Knoppix, for that matter), so I haven't followed up on it.

[PDP-8]

Well, I forgot - there's always the included Konsole / KDE terminal.  Terminator so far hasn't crashed on me in Knoppix, but I come from the old school Xterm / Rxvt line...

I find the transtion from Sysv > SystemD > Sysv > Busybox init interesting.  Probably saves a lot of time because it simply works, and easier to maintain than other options.

Pretty cool - even though the Knoppix "recipe" of using stable, testing, and experimental - along with a bevy of cheatcodes - to work on the oldest and newest machines is the goal, there is still room to experiment, like with init systems to keep things interesting.

But like TC, it is a toolkit rather than a polished "distro".  You make it your own with whatever purpose you want to put it to - but to get the most one has to put some effort into doing so.