Version 0.7.9.2 (dated 2006-02-26, released 2006-03-01)

Second release based on Knoppix 4.0.2

Quantian software changes:

• yet again grown in size: 2.7gb iso file containing over 2570 Debian packages, over 870 R packages, and a few direct source installation to complement;
• split over two compressed loop images of 1.66 and 1.19 gb, respectively;
• updates of packages in 0.7.9.1 that were held by the ongoing C++ library transition: now with KDE 3.5 (and some 3.4 apps)
• added Java 1.5.0 SDK -- and with Java support, added ImageJ, Weka, JGR, Mondrian;
• fixed a few bugs in 0.7.9.1, see the bugs page for details;
• plus a number of other new packages (inkscape, orsa, praat, wxmaxima, some more Debian documentation...)

Version 0.7.9.1 (dated 2005-12-11)

First release based on Knoppix 4.0.2 of the new 4.0 series, see Knoppix sites for full changes but highlights include unionfs support, Kernel 2.6, KDE 3.4.1 and many more changes

Quantian software changes:

• split over two compressed loop images of 2.0 and 0.5 gb, respectively
• updated throughout, and now containing over 2400 Debian packages
• R support now covers over 800 packages with almost all CRAN and BioConductor packages
• backport of openMosix-enabled 2.4.27 kernel and openMosix tools
• plus a number of new packages (gromacs, polyxmass, kst, scigraphica, latex-beamer, ...)

Version 0.6.9.3 (dated 2004-12-12)

Third release based on Knoppix 3.6

Quantian software changes:

• the Rpad interactive web-based R Gui by Tom Short, fully configured and launchable via a simple command or menu entry,
• about ten new packages from CRAN released since Quantian 0.6.9.2
• about fifteen CRAN packages updated to current versions as of December 11
• addition of the dse, CoCo, gregmisc CRAN bundles omitted in 0.6.9.2
• new packages such as clustalw/clustalx/clustalw-mpi, seaview, iraf
• Octave and Scilab updated to the newest versions from Debian unstable

Version 0.6.9.2 (dated 2004-11-29)

Second release based on Knoppix 3.6

Quantian software changes:

• Added about 1.2gb (uncompressed) in R packages from CRAN and BioConductor: by providing essentially all CRAN and BioConductor packages, Quantian offers unparalleld support for statistical computing, data analysis and graphical methods via the R environment and language. Note that these packages have been installed mostly directly from R and and will not appear in the Debian package list.
• Several new packages (aspell, auctex, dia, electric, eukleides, festlex, gij, hdf5-tools, kseg, ksimus, mozilla-firefox, panorama, python-matplotlib, sketch, sodipodi, subversion, tla and more) some included most packages in recommended by the already installed ones.
• Updated packages with newer Debian versions: apache, aribas, atlas3, blast2, ess, ggobi, grace6, r-base, and many more.

Version 0.6.9.1 (dated 2004-10-31)

First release based on Knoppix 3.6 (with Knoppix 3.5 having been an interim release for Linuxtag)

Numerous Knoppix changes from the 3.4 series:

• Linux kernels 2.4.27 and 2.6.7, both ACPI-enabled.
• KDE version 3.2.3 and GIMP version 2.0.
• enhanced hardware autodetection and driver updates,
• the FreeNX server from Fabian Franz,
• ndiswrapper to load proprietary drivers for wireless network cards,
• memtest86+ as boot option
• captive-ntfs update

clusterKnoppix changes from the v3.6-2004-08-16 release:

• Sync with latest Knoppix release
• openMosix 2.4.27-om-20040808 based on http://openmosix.snarc.org
• openmosix-tools 0.3.6-2
• tyd 1.5 from Ian Latter, also options to boot nodes from Ian' chaos
• mini-distribution vai PXE clients (chaos kernel upgraded to
• openmosix 2.4.27-om-20040808 and 2.4.27-om-migshm-20040808)
• added: openswan 2.1.5, ipw2100, drbd, fuse, bcm4400 (debian package)
• new feature: option to boot 2.4.27-om-migshm-20040808 from
• http://dev.gentoo.org/~voxus/om/ for shared memory migration

Quantian software changes:

• Contains everything from the last Quantian release (minus CRAN/BioC extras, see below)
• Updated throughout with new version 2.0.0 of R, 2.1.60 of Octave and numerous other updates
• Meta-packages are also included from several Debian subprojects: everything from Debian-Med with the exception of med-cms is included, everything from Debian-Edu is included, and the kde, math, programming and puzzle packages from Debian-Junior are included.
• A few new packages such as ddd and slicot were added to complement the existing set of now over 1900 Debian packages installed with Quantian.
• CRAN packages will get added back in once I get time to complete work on the script used to build Debian packages off the 500-some CRAN packages.

Version 0.6 (also dated 2004-09-06)

Relabeling of the last 0.5.9.* release as the actual 0.6 release

In keeping with prior practice, and as no bugs have been reported, 0.5.9.4 was copied / soft-linked over to 0.6 on October 30, 2004.

Version 0.5.9.4 (dated 2004-09-06)

Fourth release based on Knoppix 3.4

Quantian software changes:

• Added over a 1gb (uncompressed) of new software, see below for details, bringing the iso to 1.75gb compressed and over 5.5gb uncompressed.
• Added about 20 more CRAN and 31 more BioConductor packages for GNU R packages, bringing the total to about 440, including base and recommended packages.
• Added Gnumeric back in (suggested by Marcel Neitsch), this also pulled in a few other utilities.
• Add pcb to complement GNU geda (Chris Steigies)
• A few production fixes suggested by Marco: prepare md5sums to enable 'checkcd' option; suppress 'modules.conf newer' message by touch(1)'ing it; add new bootsplash screen; use his minirt24.gz and minirt36.gz boot images with ext3 patch
• Add a slew of packages suggested by Gopal Narayanan: setiathome, tkseti, xplanet, xplanet-images, saoimage, gpsim, gnucap, oregano, icom, xcircuit, vipec, xsmc-calc, transcalc
• Add two more data visualization packages: xd3d suggested and packaged by Marco, and QtiPlot also suggested by Marco.
• Added Alliance VHDL, a complete set of free CAD tools and portable libraries for VLSI design which includes a VHDL compiler and simulator, logic synthesis tools, and automatic place and route tools, see the Alliance website (suggested by 'Joe'; Debian package generated from rpm by alien(1))

Version 0.5.9.3 (dated 2004-07-31)

Third release based on Knoppix 3.4

Quantian software changes:

• way more GNU R packages generated with a modified version of a script by Albrecht Gebhardt -- about 360 packaged are added from CRAN and BioConductor providing unparalled depth for statistical computing
• an almost complete suite from the Debian-Med project for medical informatics (only CMS was left out, would Zope make sense for Quantian?)
• the GNU geda electronics design software suite
• the scalapack libraries and headers for parallel linear algebra in mpich, lam and pvm 'flavours'
• loads of 'recommended' documentation packages
• header packages for atlas3 and lam
• upgraded throughout against Debian testing, with over 300 updated packages
• total size is now 1.5gb for the compressed iso image, corresponding to more than 4.4gb of uncompressed software.
• also available are a new cdrom-sized version of 0.5.9.2 and a bootable iso of only 7mb, both contributed by Marco Caliari

Version 0.5.9.2 (dated 2004-06-27)

Second release based on Knoppix 3.4

Quantian software changes:

• New packages: qemu (a fast emulator), as well as a variery of Debian 'science' packages: kalzium, celestia, starplot, openbabel, chemtool, xtide, viewmol, achilles, blast2 and two more calculators (gcalctool, galculator).
• Several bioinformatics package from Matt Hope's site: bioperl, biopython, hmmer, emboss, as well as python-reportlab.
• Experimental support for BioConductor by directly installing into /usr/local/lib/R/site-library using BioConductor's getBioC.R script: all (current) packages from the 1.4 release apart from Rgraphviz (failed against broken deb of graphviz) and affyPLM built; actual deb packages would of course be nicer.
• Yet more CRAN packages for R: lme4, matrix, psy.
• Included for a first time are four pre-release Debian packages prepared from sources at Diethelm Wuertz' www.Rmetrics.org site for financial engineering and computational finance: fBasics, fSeries, fOptions, fExtremes.
• Upgraded throughout -- 430 new packages mostly from Debian testing (with a few from unstable), including x11, gcc et al, perl, apt/dpkg/dselect, R, lam, cernlib, geant, gretl
• An error was fixed in r-cran-rsprng which had not been compiled built correctly.
• Updated custom artwork in an improved background image, thanks again to Ed Pegg, Jr.
• Total size is now 1.2gb for the compressed iso image, corresponding to more than 3.5gb of uncompressed software.

Version 0.5.9.1 (dated 2004-06-13)

First release based on Knoppix 3.4

Numerous Knoppix changes from the 3.4 series:

• Kernel 2.4.26 as default and Kernel 2.6.5 as boot option with ACPI enabled (use knoppix acpi=off in case of problems, knoppix26 to try Kernel 2.6)
• KDE 3.2.2, and kdevelop3
• /dev/modem setup tool supporting serial, USB, bluetooth and irda devices
• gprs connection tool
• lots of improvements in the hardware detection and new boot options, more info in the file check knoppix-cheatcodes.txt.
• captive-ntfs installer, which can enable write access to ntfs partitions
• boot process switched from syslinux to isolinux making disk-booting easier

clusterKnoppix changes from the v3.4-2004-05-10 release:

• Sync with latest Knoppix release
• upgraded to "testing" release openmosix 2.4.26-om
• upgraded gomd to CVS 20040508
• fixed terminalserver/vmware problem in Knopper's release
• added yafray, update-cluster
• added host-ap, prism54
• added support for Atheros Wireless, Cisco MPI 350 wireless (madwifi/airo-mpi)
• upgraded chpox to 0.6b2
• upgraded tyd to 1.1
• upgraded kernel 2.6.5 to 2.6.6 (vanilla kernel, no openmosix kernel)

Quantian software changes:

• No packages removed in the 'kitchen sink' version, so internationalization, games, ... are still present
• More CRAN packages for R: cgiwithr, quadprog, date, rmpi, rpvm, rsprng, snow, maps, mapdata, sm, gregmisc -- the snow package wraps around rmpi and rpvm and gives easy access to distributed statistical computing
• axiom, a powerful computer-algebra system
• PyTables, a hierarchical database system for Python
• openOffice and KOffice available in 'kitchen sink' release
• and most importantly, custom artwork in new background image thanks to Ed Pegg, Jr.

Version 0.5 (also dated 2004-03-23)

Relabeling of the last 0.4.9.* release as the actual 0.5 release

No real showstoppers have appeared, so 0.4.9.6 will now also be known as 0.5 while work on the next round (0.5.9.*) should start shortly -- based on Knoppix 3.4 and the first clusterKnoppix release based on it.

Version 0.4.9.6 (dated 2004-03-23)

Minor bug fix release

Corrected /etc/ld.so.conf so that Atlas libraries are transparently loaded; this fixes the problem we had with parts of the scipy.test() regression test of SciPy

Added parallel computing toolkits lam and mpich

Added prosper and pdfscreen for LaTeX presentation, and preview-latex for (x)emacs

Added the lua scripting language

Updated R packages with the first current pre-release of the upcoming 1.9.0 release

Version 0.4.9.5 (dated 2004-03-08)

Minor bug fix release

Updated R packages based on the first pre-release of the upcoming 1.9.0 version, updated CRAN packages and a few new CRAN packages: multcomp, mvtnorn, relimp, and the uebercool rgl

Updated Octave packages based on the just released 2.1.56, and a matching octave-forge release

Improved support for Scientific Python, though scipy.test() still moans, we hope to sort that out shortly

The ftnchek package for Fortran'ers

But most importantly, we now have a custom logo for openmosixview in the KDE menubar -- thanks to Mathias Rechenburg for contributing this!

Version 0.4.9.4 (dated 2004-02-25)

Two versions

A 'kitchen sink' version 0.4.9.4.ks of about 950mb contains everything the standard size contains, plus openOffice, scilab, grass and whatever else we needed to delete to make the standard size fit in 700mb.

A 'standard' version 0.4.9.4 which fits a 700mb cdrom.

Quantian changes

Grass is back only in the kitchen sink version

openOffice is included in the kitchen sink version

Per repeated request, scilab is included, albeit only in the kitchen sink version. Note that this is a Debian 'non-free' package.

Updated packages throughout, including a snapshot of the upcoming R 1.9.0 release, Octave 2.1.55 and many others.

Autodiscovery should be aided by a forced 'promisc' on eth0.

clusterKnoppix and Knoppix changes

Based on kernel 2.4.24, this an improvement over the prior release. Unfortunately, the openMosix patch for 2.4.25 is not quite ready at this time.

Version 0.4.9.3 (dated 2004-02-09)

Quantian changes

Grass is back, with a new package from Debian unstable.

Several new Python packages: python-tk, python-gnuplot, python-stats, python2.3-egenix-mxdatetime, python2.3-egenix-mxtools, python2.3-mysqldb, python2.3-pyscopg, python2.3-pythoncard, python2.3-rpy, python2.3-sqlite

New R / CRAN packages r-cran-abind, r-cran-effects, r-cran-its, r-cran-mapdata, r-cran-mapproj, r-cran-maps, as well as a brandnew pre-release of R 1.9.0.

Freefem, plotmtv, beancounter, sqlite

No actual clusterKnoppix and Knoppix changes

This release is still based on the prior iso and contains kernel 2.4.22 which may be a concern in some environments due to the security alerts regarding 2.4.22 and 2.4.23. We expect a new release with kernel 2.4.24 shortly.

Version 0.4.9.2 (dated 2003-12-02)

Quantian changes

Added Debian packages r-cran-qtl, r-cran-dbi and r-cran-mysql based on CRAN packages qtk, DBI and RMySQL. Thanks to Steffen Moeller for packaging these.

Added Debian packages python2.3-scipy, python2.3-umfpack and python2.3-arpack providing SciPy and some add-ons, all provided by Jose Fonseca in his Debian repository. Also added standard Debian packages python-scientific and python-numeric.

Added Debian packages aplus-fsf, aplus-fsf-dev, aplus-fsf-el (as well as xfonts-kapl) providing the APL dialect A+ originally developed by Morgan Stanley.

Added Debian packages mpqc and mpqc-support for 'massively parallel quantum chemistry. Also added Debian packages ghemical and xppaut.

Added Debian packages octave2.1-headers and octave2.1-info.

Now acroread and lyx are no longer removed, as per multiple user requests.

Relative to previous versions, also removed packages blender scribus and sketch.

Packages updated throughout.

clusterKnoppix changes based on release 2003-11-19-EN-cl1 (dated 2003-11-25)

Sync with latest Knoppix release

Upgraded to openmosix 2.4.22-2

MFS enabled again (openmosix tmpfs oops fixed)

chpox upgraded to 0.6b

nforce2 chipset support added

xfs support added

ipsec support added (freeswan 2.03)

tyd from CHAOS added

Knoppix changes based on release 2003-11-19

Changelog for 2003-11-19: Added vpnc (Open Source Cisco client), prelink, qt3-designer, lots of updated packages. Removed, for space reasons: selfhtml, sodipodi, abiword, karbon.

Changelog for 2003-11-14 Euro symbol works again in konsole, but font scanning at startup is slow (fontconfig?), added bittorrent ncurses client, ALSA package update, "knoppix testcd" option is now more verbose, Changed default timings in monitor detection (may give better results with DDC-capable monitors, but you will probably have to use "knoppix vsync=60" for non-DDC-capable TFT displays), the usual bunch of Debian package updates.

Changelog for 2003-11-03: New background picture, the usual lot of updates, OpenOffice 1.1 (english and german) [ removed in Quantian, though ], KDE 3.1.4 (partly, some packages still missing), removed compressed changelogs for space reasons. Known bugs: Some ISO8859-15 fonts do not work correctly in the KDE console

And lastly see the full Knoppix 3.3 changelog here.

Version 0.4.9.1 (dated 2003-10-03) based on clusterKnoppix 2003-09-24

First release based on Knoppix 3.3

clusterKnoppix changes: gomd 0.1beta, chpox removed, added kernel source (with openMosix patch), added bcm4400 driver

Quantian changes

added r-cran-statdataml and octave-statdataml

Version 0.4 (dated 2003-10-01) based on clusterKnoppix 2003-09-05

Relabel 0.3.9.3 as 0.4

No actual changes -- last release based on Knoppix 3.2.

Version 0.3.9.3 (dated 2003-09-23) based on clusterKnoppix 2003-09-05

Some more small changes.

Two more additional packages have been installed (atlas2-base-dev, pybliographer). The localepurge package is now used to purge locale files.

Version 0.3.9.2 (dated 2003-09-18) based on clusterKnoppix 2003-09-05

Still based on an updated but not quite official release of clusterKnoppix -- we will switch to the now released one next

On top of the changes below, now added RPy, ipe, giac, gap-character-tables, kile, lush, felt, mpb, wajig for the Gap CAS, kile, ent, added fonts for texmacs, and removed comedi as we do not have a matching kernel module for it. Also removed grass due to size and lack of a current Debian package. Getting closer to 0.4.

Version 0.3.9.1 (dated 2003-09-13) based on clusterKnoppix 2003-09-05

Based on an updated, not quite official release of clusterKnoppix

Comprises newer 2.4.22 kernel, a new openMosix patch and updated software throughout -- does not yet comprise all the items from the TODO list. This is meant as a first step towards a fine 0.4 release, maybe at the end of the month or so.

Version 0.3 (dated 2003-06-09) based on clusterKnoppix 2003-05-20

Now based on clusterKnoppix

This adds support for openMosix and fulfils the promise from the initial presentation about Quantian. Operates seamlessly with matching clusterKnoppix releases. See the clusterKnoppix docs for openMosix Terminalserver.

New packages

Bowing to popular demand, we added the comedi control and measurement device interface, the grass geographical information system, the gri language for scientific graphics programming and the ipython python shell.

We also re-introduced the lyx LaTeX document processor that was cut from quantian 0.2, and added XEmacs which clusterKnoppix removes.

Packages which had been suggested but could not been added are gromacs (no native Debian package), giac (inofficial Debian package not quite up to packaging standards) and scipy (uninstallable, inofficial Debian package). As a general rule, official packages are clearly preferred.

Version 0.2 (dated 2003-05-28) based on Knoppix 2003-05-20

Based on Knoppix 3.2. Added more quantitative packages.

Version 0.1 (dated 2003-03-06) based on Knoppix 2003-01-22

Initial proof-of-concept release based on Knoppix 3.1.