The Future

Knoppix, the downloadable edition from LinuxTag, will continue being a public experiment with a snapshot of the current, most representative desktop programs, rescue tools, and some popular servers installed. The challenge of keeping hardware support up-to-date is always difficult. Some of the newer hardware components , especially hotpluggable devices, require that binary firmware files be uploaded to the device during activation. Unfortunately, the licenses of the firmware don't allow free redistribution in every case, so some hardware will never be supported in the download edition, even if drives are available for private use. One attempt to circumvent this nontechnical problem with proprietary licenses is the "live installer" that was added by Fabian Franz for Knoppix Version 3.4. Maybe a "Knoppix customizing toolkit" would allow you to individually create such personal editions with a collection of software and drives . But currently, it seems to be virtually impossible to automate every single step of the customization process, though Morphix has made some interesting progress in this direction.