How'd this get started?:
Andreas Mueller: I'm a long-time advocate for Linux and open-source software.
It was initiated by Klaus Knopper. He had no more space
left on his LiveCD ( Knoppix ). I was quite jealous
when I learned it would have only KDE. I talked to Klaus
and he liked the idea of a separate LiveCD with Gnome.
Gnoppix is a Debian based distro.
What do you think are its best features?
Gnome 2.1x and Debian's base are the fundamental core of Gnoppix.
The autobuild is a great thing, I remember, when I
started, everything was done manually. Today everything
is automated and is built from standard Debian packages.
Nowadays such a LiveCD is done in less than 30min.
Another great thing is, there aren't any architecture limitations
anymore. If someone want try Linux on your Mac, drop it in, start
it up.
Hardware detection and autoconfiguration works now out of the
box. Even on PPC or AMD64 Archs. Thats amazing.
Last not least the great community. It's impossible to test
every kind of hardware, especially new hardware. I get every
day my bugmails and of course the success stories, from people
around the world. It is a great feeling if you bring people
from different continents together using all the same software
and you see they start communicating with each other, friendships
begin, amazing to see such a thing.
What is cooking for future releases?
I'm working now with the Balix Project together on a LiveCD
installer. We definitely need some admintools, documentation.
Unfortunately the Mepis project won't allow us to use their GPL
tools (?!?), they didn't publish the sources. But this is another storry.
Such a thing, save your settings on hdd, usb, floppy or network
is also in the queue.
My long-term plan is a web front-end, the user select packages
which he wants on the CD, some users prefer Mozilla the other user
prefer Firefox, so it would be the best thing, let the user choose
which software he want on his CD. You click your LiveCD, upload your
own files/background/artwork/programs/sounds and finally you get your
own LiveCD.
What could you use to move forward?
A trip to the ISS :) Nooo just joking, I'm happy to have a fast
internet connection sponsored by my employer hosteurope.de, I'm
also gratefully to Mark Shuttleworth, he gave me some time in a great
team. Many thanks also to Flo from Telefonica they host all the
images on a gigabit connection which i get for free. Last not least
Nordy my friend from Turkey, he made all the nice artwork at Gnoppix.
I asked some friends for a Gnoppix torrent server that looks like
mission impossible, maybe a reader could donate a such a server,
that would be really very helpful for people with slow internet
connections.
