Isn't this what eventually became Kali linux? I remember Knoppix and Whoppix then I didn't really check on the projects for a while then Kali came along
rs_rs_rs_rs_rs · 2026-06-30 14:46:46 UTC
Kali was Backtrack before which was built on Whax which was based on Slackware.
ivanmontillam · 2026-06-30 16:16:21 UTC
I fondly remember Backtrack 2, running as a Live distro. I remember going to university labs where a teacher taught us a couple of techniques or so. Great days.
lordleft · 2026-06-30 14:48:31 UTC
I remember burning this on a CD as a preteen. It's what got me into Linux. It blew my mind that an OS could be live-loaded off a disk. Ever since then, I tried to daily drive linux, but came back to Windows again and again for gaming...until this year.
janderson3 · 2026-06-30 15:26:06 UTC
I remember using PHLAK (Professional Hackers Linux Assault Kit) that I'm pretty sure was based on Knoppix. I don't know if PHLAK actually had any pedigree heading into Kali, but Kali stepped up when PHLAK stopped.
jpfromlondon · 2026-06-30 15:52:52 UTC
There was a Knoppix STD (security tools distro), I remember using that in the mid/early 00s.
ivanmontillam · 2026-06-30 16:14:59 UTC
That's such an unfortunate name for a good, reputable distro.
rivetfasten · 2026-06-30 14:49:56 UTC
Knoppix was the first Linux distro I ever tried back in the early 2000s. IIRC it was only a few hundred megs.
At the time it didn't have the overlayfs feature which often felt limiting since most directories were read only. Slax felt like a serious upgrade since you could install more packages after booting the CD.
I think Knoppix was the original live CD distro though?
satiated_grue · 2026-06-30 17:09:30 UTC
I remember running live and then installing from Yggdrasil in the early 90s on 486 with 8MB RAM and 250MB hard disk.
Really liked Knoppix for a lot of things, though. Used to take it to the county used-sales office and boot the PCs they were selling to test for functionality and Linux compatibility.
parasti · 2026-06-30 14:51:00 UTC
What a blast from the past. Seeing Knoppix on my room mate's PC in 2004 is what led to a 20+ year ongoing adventure with Linux, Debian, gaming on Linux, compiling games with a friggin compiler and automake, programming, it all started with that distro.
Waterluvian · 2026-06-30 14:53:54 UTC
In Grade 10 we'd pass around a Knoppix CD in the computer lab to boot up into something a bit more useful than the "Student Vista" locked down Windows XP machines.
I remember there being a sliding puzzle game in the theme of assembling molecules. I remember this because I remember a very classic argument between two teenagers over "propene" being a typo of "propane" vs. being an actual chemical. If only they were sitting in front of a device that could help them find the answer.
thewisenerd · 2026-06-30 15:16:54 UTC
puppy linux on a live USB here :)
codingrightnow · 2026-06-30 16:08:02 UTC
Puppy via USB was one of my first. My real first was SUSE distributed via CD-ROM in a GNU/Linux magazine. I used to run Puppy from not a usb drive but a hard drive in an external closure plugged into the USB port. I was a poor college kid and that's all I had.
anthk · 2026-06-30 15:18:23 UTC
Katomic.
nmfisher · 2026-06-30 14:55:54 UTC
This is a blast from the past. Knoppix saved my life a few times, it was the easiest way to mount a drive with a broken partition table or something else went that haywire with a dual-boot system. It was also the safest option for doing something on a public computer without leaving a trace (though back then NIC drivers were always a bit finicky).
My first Knoppix CD may have actually come by way of the front cover of Linux Magazine.
sdoering · 2026-06-30 15:08:33 UTC
I can second this. Very similar experience. Was a blast to see this pop up here.
anthk · 2026-06-30 15:19:45 UTC
Same there. The huge amount of software and geeky toys that came with it was impressive. From Emacs itself to the BB demo, libre games and whatnot.
You could install it to a hard disk and get a ready to use Debian Testing install with one of the best hardware autodetection settings ever.
jaffa2 · 2026-06-30 14:57:40 UTC
I had knoppix running at the time. It was my first experience of a Live CD. which was cool as I could run it I'm sure it was a pentium 100 with 16meg and 800MB hdd. or maybe it was later on my Pentium II with 128Meg and 6.4GB Fireball!
Either way I used it a good few times to rescue data and generally fiddle with all sort of pcs from this era. (late 90's to early 2000')
TacticalCoder · 2026-06-30 15:09:01 UTC
Same. Back then we weren't booting off USB memory sticks: CDs it was. Knoppix and memtest to troubleshoot friends and family's PCs were my go-to tools. Always had a few bootable CD roms in the car. Heck I'd even take a HDD with me and wouldn't hesitate to open other people's PC and hook my "rescue HDD".
Worst memory ever troubleshooting a friend's PC was in the 386 or 486 days (didn't have Knoppix yet but was already on Slackware): he asked me to backup his files and I hooked one of my HDD as the main (as it was booting fine) and hooked my friend's HDD as a "slave" (that's how the terminology was back then). But I got sloppy and just let my friend's HDD sitting on the tower. Metallic PC tower. I turned the computer on, we heard an horrible noise and we saw a puff of smoke.
Old HDDs were kinda wild from that standpoint: much more exposed conductive parts than the later ones.
I just managed to short-circuit his HDD and it, nearly literally, went up in smoke. I was feeling really bad and gave him a HDD of mine. Oh well at least he had a working computer (but zero files of his).
mc32 · 2026-06-30 15:31:09 UTC
The usual solution to bad controller boards was finding the same model drive and swapping boards at least temporarily to get data off.
lgeorget · 2026-06-30 14:59:20 UTC
That's a blast from the past. I remember repairing my main install from a minimal Knoppix on my 1GB USB drive... Good old times.
hit8run · 2026-06-30 14:59:43 UTC
Brings back memories. One of my earlier Linux touch points. There was also this sibling Kanotix. Good times.
niko323 · 2026-06-30 15:03:22 UTC
Knoppix: The OG. No AI was used.
seanclayton · 2026-06-30 15:04:53 UTC
I was maybe 9 years old when I first used Linux, and it was with Knoppix and KDE. Loved early plasma. Arch is my thing these days, but KDE is still my DE of choice. Glad to see KHTML from Konquerer living in Blink and WebKit these days, too!
n6242 · 2026-06-30 15:26:25 UTC
I was a bit older but not by much. I used Knoppix to recover some data from my old Windows PC, great first contact with Linux.
officeplant · 2026-06-30 15:16:21 UTC
Knoppix 1.0 is still my first experience of linux that worked right out of the box. Forever gave me a fondness for live CD/DVD booting.
normalaccess · 2026-06-30 15:19:43 UTC
I remember a younger me being dazzled by the colored boot text. Good times!
kilroy123 · 2026-06-30 15:25:59 UTC
Same here! I used it all the time back in the 2000s. I have fond memories of sliding a CD into an old desktop and using Linux.
horticulturist · 2026-06-30 15:17:33 UTC
I used to use knoppix to rescue broken systems back in the day, including many a Windows machine. Always did what I needed it to. Glad to see it’s still around.
tnelsond4 · 2026-06-30 15:27:31 UTC
Knoppix used to have a really good desktop environment with effects and games. I think it had KDE with compiz-fusion. That was awesome. Now it's just bland lxde.
rckclmbr · 2026-06-30 16:41:52 UTC
compiz was amazing, I remember playing with the wobbly windows for hours
doener · 2026-06-30 15:30:02 UTC
Knoppix got really popular in Germany in the 2000s when it was still common that PC magazines were sold with CD-ROMs. Especially c't, Germany's most prestigious computer magazine, made Knoppix popular with their bootable Linux CDs for data rescue issues.
seethishat · 2026-06-30 15:41:19 UTC
c't published articles about a few programs that I wrote (many years ago). They always sent me copies of the magazine with a CD when they did that. The CD had all the free/open source programs that were discussed in the magazine. Very good publisher.
prpl · 2026-06-30 15:37:23 UTC
I built a 40 (later 80) node cluster with clusterknoppix ~2006 to run a bunch of physics simulations off of old library computers after I replaced a bunch of PSU fans. Kept my cubicle toasty until we moved them into a random subterranean room I think was used for some early nuclear research at university.
kmeaw · 2026-06-30 15:45:54 UTC
I remember a cool implementation detail about the earliest Knoppix version (don't remember which one) I had that was documented somewhere on that disc - when constructing a release filesystem image, the boot process was instrumented to get an ordered list of files being read. Then that list was fed into an image building program so when written to a CD, the files will be organized in an optimal order so a linear read with some readahead would get you a better boot time.
teddyh · 2026-06-30 15:52:52 UTC
Wait, I thought the official web page for Knoppix was <https://knoppix.net/>? What is this knopper.net?
moeffju · 2026-06-30 16:01:32 UTC
Knoppix.net literally says this on their homepage:
> Knoppix.net is a resource for users, developers, and testers of Knoppix. The official website for Knoppix is on Klaus Knopper's website at knopper.net.
zer0zzz · 2026-06-30 16:00:00 UTC
Klaus Knopper, now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time.
throwaway2016a · 2026-06-30 16:13:21 UTC
Fun to see this on the front page. I'm curious if ops intent was to share something cool is trigger a bunch of nostalgia because they definitely did the latter.
I remember using this when it first came out. It was a game changer for doing forensics back before full disk encryption was a common thing.
jonwinstanley · 2026-06-30 16:27:52 UTC
Very nostalgic! I remember using this a few times around maybe 2005 when a Windows system got corrupted. Knoppix would boot from the CD and let you recover files from your HD. Loved it
asveikau · 2026-06-30 16:48:35 UTC
I frequently see things on HN where people just share the website of a well known project. I assume it's for people who legit never heard of it. Maybe they're younger. I think of a saying, every year a new generation discovers the Beatles for the first time.
This was the first Linux I used (mainly, to play Nibbles for Knoppix). The live-boot CD was a treasured belonging. Good times!
dec0dedab0de · 2026-06-30 16:22:19 UTC
There was a time that this was the easiest way to install Debian.
alexey-salmin · 2026-06-30 17:05:15 UTC
100%. The detection/configuration of hardware just worked out of the box. It's a must-have for a livecd and still a reeeealy nice-to-have for your permanent install back then.
itomato · 2026-06-30 19:16:11 UTC
100%. Tell synaptic to find the best mirror and go.
fasterik · 2026-06-30 16:23:17 UTC
When I was a kid I got obsessed with Linux, but my family only had one PC in the living room. After an attempt to set up Windows/Linux dual boot where I messed up the partition table, my parents banned me from tinkering with it. Luckily I discovered Knoppix and other live distros, which allowed me to boot into a safe environment to play around in.
sevg · 2026-06-30 16:51:12 UTC
I remember also hosing the bootloader somehow on my first try of Linux, luckily my personal desktop so no collatoral damage!
After that I always had a CD wallet thing with copies of sysresccd and supergrubdisk and others (including I think an old knoppix cd from a linux magazine).
dijit · 2026-06-30 17:44:34 UTC
Similar story here.
When I first started going towards Linux I tried, in this order:
* Puppy linux, because I liked puppies.
* College linux, because it was for education, and I was in secondary school, and college sounded fancy.
* Adriane Knoppix, because it's what came up when you did a web search for "knoppix download" -- that was interesting, if you didn't know, ADRIANE is for blind people.
* Whoppix (which became Whax) -- because I could actually find the download.
* Backtrack linux (because that was apparently better than WHAX)
* Slackware, because backtrack was based on this and "only script kiddies use Backtrack".
I did the same as you, tried to keep things to liveCDs but I always got the urge to install them, so would do it periodically until everything broke. This also meant I had to deal with whatever was broken (usually wifi).
One thing I remember very fondly though, which isn't a linux, is the leaked Geek Squad rescue CD... I'd give a decent chunk of change for an updated one of those..
m-hodges · 2026-06-30 18:17:53 UTC
Knoppix LiveCD in 2004 was my very first try at Linux. The fear of HDD partitioning my parents' PC delayed me from installing Ubuntu Warty by a few months.
SoftTalker · 2026-06-30 16:35:54 UTC
Knoppix was useful when a linux box got hosed and would not boot for some reason. Boot into Knoppix, you have an easy root shell and almost all the tools you'd need to fix a broken system.
Haven't used it in many years however, since most distro installers now boot a "live" linux so I just use that.
progmetaldev · 2026-06-30 16:37:53 UTC
I fixed a lot of Windows machines, especially partition issues, with Knoppix up until around 2014. I used to also use the wireless tools to detect rogue access points in hotels where my employer was providing internet access. Those were some good times, and helped me learn quite a bit about networking and security in general.
jammcq · 2026-06-30 16:49:18 UTC
I started using Linux with Redhat but when they stopped doing the free version (sometime in the late 90's) I wanted to switch to Debian so I used Knoppix as a stepping stone to get there. Really made it easy. Then, somewhere around 2006 or 2007, I met Klaus Knopper and his wife at one of the Ubuntu developer summits. I think it was the one in Paris. Really nice guy and with the help of his wife, they did a lot of work to help people with vision impairment use Linux.
shevy-java · 2026-06-30 16:54:33 UTC
Kanotix was even better. Kano built on top of knoppix.
Lateron I think this was renamed to sidux, based on debian sid.
Been quite a while since I last used either though. Nowadays
most linux distribution .iso files work - they may not be as
adjusted as knoppix or kanotix but my use cases have changed.
I mostly use manjaro these days, it works quite well as base
system (I modify it anyway, so what I am using has only little
parts of manjaro left, mostly just the linux kernel and glibc,
rest I already compiled anew from source).
krekr · 2026-06-30 16:57:45 UTC
The go-to live cd that helped me fix many Windows XP installs! Thanks for the memory.
I first thought there was something new about it
ventana · 2026-06-30 17:00:26 UTC
Back in 2001 or so, I was studying in a college in another city, and traveled back home during breaks and on some weekends. On one occasion, I took a Knoppix mini-CD with me, repartitioned the hard drive on my mom's computer to cut a small ext2 partition for myself, installed Knoppix (there was a script to install it on HDD), set grub timeout to something like 1 second so no one would ever notice, and enjoyed my very own hidden Linux every time I visited home.
I'm pretty sure that if I manage to find that HDD, it will boot today.
zvmaz · 2026-06-30 17:03:53 UTC
Fond memories of Knoppix from when I was younger. Many many thanks to the authors.
unethical_ban · 2026-06-30 17:13:16 UTC
I love that so many people have fond memories, and I assume it says something about the state of bootable linux distros that Knoppix is not as unique anymore.
Knoppix was my first experience with Linux over 20 years ago; my brother-in-law introduced me to it and it was really neat. "My computer isn't just Windows!"
Now with major distros offering live sessions in their installer, you can just hop into Ubuntu/Fedora/Arch.
falsaberN1 · 2026-06-30 17:21:39 UTC
At one point in the very early 2000s my HDD failed and I was diskless for a while. I used Knoppix to be able to run things using a floppy to store my configs.
I've been using Linux as daily driver ever since. The necessity to do a trial by fire made me pretty good at it and helped me in my professional life as well.
Thank you Knoppix.
Scoundreller · 2026-06-30 18:42:51 UTC
Similar but with a 16mb usb drive for my settings and apps.
Ran pretty well since I only used an msn clone, web browser, occasional types assignment and some Winamp clone. Had an an external hdd for my media do it covered everything and just worked.
Boot times didn’t matter cuz it was so stable.
falsaberN1 · 2026-06-30 19:26:34 UTC
I quickly learned to symlink certain things (usually the least-updated ones) to folders in $HOME, and put together some bash scripting to copy stuff back and forth. By the time I had a replacement disk I was already somewhat fluent.
And yeah, hardly ever had to reboot, only when doing radical changes in setup. I remember I was using windowmaker instead of the default KDE 3 after a while, although I don't quite remember the thought process that led me to it.
the_af · 2026-06-30 17:26:34 UTC
Wow, it's been a while since I heard that name.
Knoppix saved my bacon a couple of times, I remember using their live CD.
mempko · 2026-06-30 17:29:36 UTC
This brings me back. Used the live cd (then later thumb drive) at my university whenever I needed to use the computers. Would just reboot into it.
nosioptar · 2026-06-30 17:32:20 UTC
If you like Knoppix, Slitaz is also worth checking out. I think slitaz has more updated release at the moment.
sombragris · 2026-06-30 17:40:12 UTC
Nice to see Knoppix featured here. This is basically the distro that pioneered the "Live CD" Linux where you can play with the full system without the need to commit to a full install. This was huge at a time where it was quite difficult for a non-technical user to install Linux. In addition, it was based on Debian, which at the time still was much more difficult to install than now, so for many people Knoppix was a way to use Debian without having to use that old installer. To top that, it used KDE.
Since then, a lot of Live Linux distros emerged, with various features offered; Debian got a much better installer; and then Knoppix dropped KDE Plasma as their desktop environment. All of that made me to move over to better "Live Linux" distros.
rincebrain · 2026-06-30 17:41:06 UTC
I had a lot of use for this for a few years, there was a window where I had my first laptop's hard drive die a horrible death, but I could not afford a replacement.
Enter Knoppix and persisting any state I cared about on a thumb drive.
Of course, since RAM was so limited on devices, just installing packages and leaving the modifications taking up valuable RAM was inconvenient to do, so I went down a rabbit hole of customizing the image builds with various nonsense.
Useful dozens of other times before Ubuntu popularized live images just being a thing you supplied as table stakes, but that window of going down a customization rabbit hole and running a diskless laptop is what I remember.
pessimizer · 2026-06-30 17:43:13 UTC
Knoppix was basically the dawn of mass-market Linux, and I think it goes unsung. Installing Linux on a fresh computer, or even worse setting up dual boot, was way too much of a commitment to try it out. Knoppix gave us live CDs, and everybody who had been making excuses for years could test drive to their hearts content and find out it wasn't so hard.
It was certainly my Linux start. I'd been embarrassingly defying friends for years and sticking to Windows because I'm a creature of habit - thank god I jumped ship before Vista, when all my habits would have changed by force.
I think the 1-2 punch of Knoppix and Vista might be responsible for a significant portion of current Linux usage, at least in a Butterfly Effect way. People who were trying out Linux when Vista came had an easy escape hatch, and wouldn't have felt any urge to turn back until Windows had reverted to usable again.
srijan4 · 2026-06-30 17:44:59 UTC
Oh man, fond memories.
I remember being very interested in programming in middle/high school, but all the environments in our school computer lab had windows (this was in India), and I think at that time (maybe 2001-2003) I didn't even know there were other operating systems.
Our school was participating in something called International Cyber Olympiad, and of course I gave the eligibility exam.
They sent all students who passed a Knoppix Live CD to prepare for the actual competition. We did not have a PC at home until a couple of years later, but I used that CD in any PC I could find anywhere - the school computer lab, the school library computers, and my dad's office computers. It was my first experience with a Linux system (and I found it awesome). Also my first experience with gcc instead of borland c++.
buzzwords · 2026-06-30 17:57:36 UTC
Omg great memories.
letsdelta · 2026-06-30 18:03:52 UTC
Oh man, I saved a lot of friends files from crashed windows with this. I was like a wizard.
wjholden · 2026-06-30 18:11:32 UTC
Super nostalgic for me just to see the name. My computing teacher gave me a Knoppix LiveCD when I was about 18 and I immediately fell in love with Linux. Within weeks I was (repeatedly) attempting to install Gentoo on my first computer that I built. What a wonderful project!
tacodestroyer · 2026-06-30 18:20:44 UTC
GD I didn't expect to get teary eyed this early in the day
tobi_bsf · 2026-06-30 18:27:28 UTC
man i thought the guy died when i saw the post. glad he seems well. also he is surprisingly young.
(Leo is an amalgam of myself and another person as the story we submitted was modified for privacy reasons).
whalesalad · 2026-06-30 18:47:30 UTC
I used knoppix (and later SLAX) in high school to reboot shared computers (library, labs, etc) and then extract the SAM file from the C:\ drive. I would shuttle the file home on a USB stick and crack it overnight. After doing this on a handful of computers I ended up having virtually every teacher/admin password in the school, including the domain admin which was no shit all lowercase "north". The crack was so fast for weeks I thought it was a mistake and never even attempted to use it.
The most interesting thing was the patterns you could see with various teachers and pw reset policies. Some had themes like seasonal, others would take the current month and tack-on a number.
I ended up getting expelled for using that domain admin account to poke around. Had to transfer to a different school and was perma-banned from touching a computer for the rest of my time there. It ended up being a blessing in disguise, I had a lot more fun and grew up a lot at the other, larger high school. I still recall my guidance counselor helping me setup my classes for senior year... "ok, yeah and we'll put you in programming for your elective... OH WAIT... you aren't allowed to be anywhere near a computer, ceramics it is". Ceramics ended up being a blast!
Comments
At the time it didn't have the overlayfs feature which often felt limiting since most directories were read only. Slax felt like a serious upgrade since you could install more packages after booting the CD.
I think Knoppix was the original live CD distro though?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux/GNU/X
Really liked Knoppix for a lot of things, though. Used to take it to the county used-sales office and boot the PCs they were selling to test for functionality and Linux compatibility.
I remember there being a sliding puzzle game in the theme of assembling molecules. I remember this because I remember a very classic argument between two teenagers over "propene" being a typo of "propane" vs. being an actual chemical. If only they were sitting in front of a device that could help them find the answer.
My first Knoppix CD may have actually come by way of the front cover of Linux Magazine.
You could install it to a hard disk and get a ready to use Debian Testing install with one of the best hardware autodetection settings ever.
Either way I used it a good few times to rescue data and generally fiddle with all sort of pcs from this era. (late 90's to early 2000')
Worst memory ever troubleshooting a friend's PC was in the 386 or 486 days (didn't have Knoppix yet but was already on Slackware): he asked me to backup his files and I hooked one of my HDD as the main (as it was booting fine) and hooked my friend's HDD as a "slave" (that's how the terminology was back then). But I got sloppy and just let my friend's HDD sitting on the tower. Metallic PC tower. I turned the computer on, we heard an horrible noise and we saw a puff of smoke.
Old HDDs were kinda wild from that standpoint: much more exposed conductive parts than the later ones.
I just managed to short-circuit his HDD and it, nearly literally, went up in smoke. I was feeling really bad and gave him a HDD of mine. Oh well at least he had a working computer (but zero files of his).
> Knoppix.net is a resource for users, developers, and testers of Knoppix. The official website for Knoppix is on Klaus Knopper's website at knopper.net.
I remember using this when it first came out. It was a game changer for doing forensics back before full disk encryption was a common thing.
After that I always had a CD wallet thing with copies of sysresccd and supergrubdisk and others (including I think an old knoppix cd from a linux magazine).
When I first started going towards Linux I tried, in this order:
* Puppy linux, because I liked puppies.
* College linux, because it was for education, and I was in secondary school, and college sounded fancy.
* Adriane Knoppix, because it's what came up when you did a web search for "knoppix download" -- that was interesting, if you didn't know, ADRIANE is for blind people.
* Whoppix (which became Whax) -- because I could actually find the download.
* Backtrack linux (because that was apparently better than WHAX)
* Slackware, because backtrack was based on this and "only script kiddies use Backtrack".
I did the same as you, tried to keep things to liveCDs but I always got the urge to install them, so would do it periodically until everything broke. This also meant I had to deal with whatever was broken (usually wifi).
One thing I remember very fondly though, which isn't a linux, is the leaked Geek Squad rescue CD... I'd give a decent chunk of change for an updated one of those..
Haven't used it in many years however, since most distro installers now boot a "live" linux so I just use that.
Lateron I think this was renamed to sidux, based on debian sid.
Been quite a while since I last used either though. Nowadays most linux distribution .iso files work - they may not be as adjusted as knoppix or kanotix but my use cases have changed. I mostly use manjaro these days, it works quite well as base system (I modify it anyway, so what I am using has only little parts of manjaro left, mostly just the linux kernel and glibc, rest I already compiled anew from source).
I first thought there was something new about it
I'm pretty sure that if I manage to find that HDD, it will boot today.
Knoppix was my first experience with Linux over 20 years ago; my brother-in-law introduced me to it and it was really neat. "My computer isn't just Windows!"
Now with major distros offering live sessions in their installer, you can just hop into Ubuntu/Fedora/Arch.
Thank you Knoppix.
Ran pretty well since I only used an msn clone, web browser, occasional types assignment and some Winamp clone. Had an an external hdd for my media do it covered everything and just worked.
Boot times didn’t matter cuz it was so stable.
Knoppix saved my bacon a couple of times, I remember using their live CD.
Since then, a lot of Live Linux distros emerged, with various features offered; Debian got a much better installer; and then Knoppix dropped KDE Plasma as their desktop environment. All of that made me to move over to better "Live Linux" distros.
Enter Knoppix and persisting any state I cared about on a thumb drive.
Of course, since RAM was so limited on devices, just installing packages and leaving the modifications taking up valuable RAM was inconvenient to do, so I went down a rabbit hole of customizing the image builds with various nonsense.
Useful dozens of other times before Ubuntu popularized live images just being a thing you supplied as table stakes, but that window of going down a customization rabbit hole and running a diskless laptop is what I remember.
It was certainly my Linux start. I'd been embarrassingly defying friends for years and sticking to Windows because I'm a creature of habit - thank god I jumped ship before Vista, when all my habits would have changed by force.
I think the 1-2 punch of Knoppix and Vista might be responsible for a significant portion of current Linux usage, at least in a Butterfly Effect way. People who were trying out Linux when Vista came had an easy escape hatch, and wouldn't have felt any urge to turn back until Windows had reverted to usable again.
I remember being very interested in programming in middle/high school, but all the environments in our school computer lab had windows (this was in India), and I think at that time (maybe 2001-2003) I didn't even know there were other operating systems.
Our school was participating in something called International Cyber Olympiad, and of course I gave the eligibility exam.
They sent all students who passed a Knoppix Live CD to prepare for the actual competition. We did not have a PC at home until a couple of years later, but I used that CD in any PC I could find anywhere - the school computer lab, the school library computers, and my dad's office computers. It was my first experience with a Linux system (and I found it awesome). Also my first experience with gcc instead of borland c++.
(Leo is an amalgam of myself and another person as the story we submitted was modified for privacy reasons).
The most interesting thing was the patterns you could see with various teachers and pw reset policies. Some had themes like seasonal, others would take the current month and tack-on a number.
I ended up getting expelled for using that domain admin account to poke around. Had to transfer to a different school and was perma-banned from touching a computer for the rest of my time there. It ended up being a blessing in disguise, I had a lot more fun and grew up a lot at the other, larger high school. I still recall my guidance counselor helping me setup my classes for senior year... "ok, yeah and we'll put you in programming for your elective... OH WAIT... you aren't allowed to be anywhere near a computer, ceramics it is". Ceramics ended up being a blast!
I really enjoyed the 'security tools distribution'
Klaus Knopper is a hero for creating it. Clever guy.