Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition

Chapter 3. Tweak Your Desktop

Hacks 25–39

After you have become comfortable with the desktop and the different desktop applications that Knoppix includes, you might want to save documents or settings that you have worked on. This chapter contains hacks that cover methods to save your settings and documents so you can access them the next time you boot, along with how to use settings you might already have on the Linux or Windows system installed on your hard drive.

The next few hacks cover some specialized desktop uses for Knoppix, including using it as a kiosk or terminal server. With these hacks, you can turn a regular computer into a specialized kiosk for your business, and then use the terminal server to boot multiple computers all from the same Knoppix disk over the network. The final hacks cover different methods Knoppix includes so that you can install software “live” on the booted disk. You can use this to get that extra bit of software that Knoppix didn’t happen to include without resorting to remastering the disk.

The ability to make your Knoppix settings persistent opens a whole world of possibilities for Knoppix as a portable desktop solution. With a USB key drive and a Knoppix disk, you can boot Knoppix on any machine available to you; load your settings from the USB drive and your desktop and your work can follow you wherever you go.

Use Aufs

Understand how Knoppix merges the ramdisk with the read-only filesystem to allow you to treat the filesystem like it was a hard drive ...