Kanotix Woes

[jml]

Just read in Distrowatch and then here: http://kanotix.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-22892.html at the Kanotix web site that one of the co-founders/developers is quitting the Kanotix project due to technological and philisophical differences of opinion. That's really disappointing to me because it was the only Debian (SID) based distro I found that supported WPA encryption out of the box. A feature I really liked. The individual leaving is starting a new distro called Sidux. I wish both parties well in their new paths. I guess I will run Kanotix on my main machine until it breaks, and start testing other distros with my laptop. Once Etch goes stable, I may just bight the bullet and force myself to learn how to configure WPA supplicant.

Joe

[craigevil]

Actually it was more than one person that was working on Kanotix, that left to continue work on a Debian Sid distro.

sidux - New Star in the Linux Galaxy :: sidux.com :: debian based live cd development

On 24th of November 2006 sidux was formed by a group of people who strive to do the impossible: making Debian Sid (aka "Unstable") stable. The goal is becoming the best Debian Sid based live distro with special focus on clean and easy hard disk install. Strategic milestones and 3-4 planned releases timetabled will give stability and accountability to corporate and home users with a demand for bleeding edge software running on modern hardware, and a definable path over time.

The declared and agreed points are:

1) sidux detects and enables you to instantly use more different pieces of hardware than any other operating system today (including other Linuxes), without the need to search for drivers from the hardware vendors' web sites or complicated installation routines. Everything comes ready on a fast live-CD, and can be installed to your hard drive in just a couple of minutes. Only non-free stuff may require additional action.

2) sidux gives you direct and 100% compatible access to the world's biggest repository of software packages (more than 17.000 at the moment in Debian Sid), all of them free and open source, many of them in professional quality. No virus, no trojan - and again no complicate searching hundreds of websites for an application and running dubious installers.

3) sidux is free and open source and comes with free & priceless 24/7 support via this forum and chat (the IRC). Our support staff is friendly, helpful and very highly skilled - some of them are developers of this operating system themselves, others are accessible for complicated escalated support issues.

4) sidux is not corporate driven or owned, but community driven. Actually we are a community of volunteers who share a common goal - building the brilliant operating system.

5) sidux is extremely flexible and offers a bulk load of ready made scripts and meta-packages. You may use them to mutate it into a secure server system, a high class music studio, a professional graphics design workstation, a corporate desktop - or whatever you actually need.

6) sidux is always bleeding edge technology, packed into a tested and stable combination which is ready for use. It is moving very fast, and will always bring to you the hippest and most interesting developments first. sidux is also one of the few operating systems where you can get a 64bit system with real 64bit compiled applications - and again providing the 100% compatible access to Debian Sid.

7) sidux is multilingual - people from all over the world meet here and talk in their native, but also secondary languages. We believe in the power of shared and open communication and therefore don't split the community by countries or languages, but concentrate them. Many people here do speak several languages and are using them when helping you.

There is definitely much more to say - but that's it for the beginning. Please understand that we need to prepare the first release carefully. The project is in its very first days after foundation and will need some weeks until everything works perfectly. Stay tuned, we will keep you updated!

The Initial sidux Team:

Stefan Lippers-Hollmann (slh)
Trevor Walkley (bluewater)
Chris Hildebrandt (slam)
Ferdi Thommes (devil)
Ralph Hokanson Jr. (piper)
Roland Engert (RoEn)
Harald Hope (h2)
Joaquim Boura (x-un-i)
Niall Walsh (bfree)
Andreas Hausmann (Bodhi)
etorix

Kanotix is pretty much dead in the water, and is either going to be based on ubuntu or Debian testing; either way the fun way is Sid.
Long live Sidux!!

[jml]

I didn't realize that so many developers left. Craigevil, you are right, Kanotix as we knew it is dead. When I went to the Sidux web site I did not see an option to download the distro. I assume its too early to expect results so soon after the split. Have you heard of any proposed time line for release?

Joe

[craigevil]

They are hoping to have a iso some time this month, from the sound of it the livecd will have fluxbox and perhaps a light version of kde.

You can upgrade to sidux already as slh has most of the packages available. The d-u yesterday removed most of the kanotix packages and installed the sidux ones, including Cathbard's new artwork for sidux.

You can get the sources.list by doing :
wget -O/etc/apt/sources.list http://sidux.com/files/misc/sources.list

It is a shame about Kanotix, it was my first introduction to linux and the distro I have been running for over 2 yrs. Kano is a very talented packager and scripter, running Kanotix made Sid "stable".

If you like running Kanotix because it was based on Debian Sid, then Sidux is the new way to go.

Upgrade a Debian Sid System :: sidux.com :: debian based live cd development

Upgrade a Debian Sid System

This step is very easy, you have again two options:

1. Option: This is the recommended option for beginners. Use the du-fixes-h2.sh script from h2;:
* follow the instructions on his page for downloading and installing if you don't have his script already
* start it with the option -X (du-fixes-h2.sh -X)
* the script will do all changes for you and it will update your system
2. Option: This is for the advanced user. Adjust your /etc/apt/sources.list by hand:
* remove all Kanotix based entries (if there are any)
* insert the following lines to your sources.list:

# sidux
deb http://sidux.com/debian/ sid main contrib non-free fix.main fix.contrib fix.non-free vdr
# sidux temporarily
deb http://sidux.com/repo/transitional/ sid main contrib non-free
deb http://sidux.com/repo/compat/ sid main contrib non-free


If your not sure which entries can be deleted you can also download our basic sidux sources.list:
wget -O/etc/apt/sources.list http://sidux.com/files/misc/sources.list

*
o switch to init 3
o login as root
o do a apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade