root/morphix/trunk/how_tos/morphixoverview.html

<h1>A look at Morphix: The Hack-friendly Live CD</h1>

<p>Given the popularity of Knoppix and the vast amount of people
working on derivative versions of Knoppix, it doesn't come as a
surprise that people have been working to make Knoppix easier to
modify and more flexible to use. In early 2003, Morphix was born out
of a number of Knoppix remasters' wishes to have a version of Knoppix
that was good at what they used Knoppix for: a base upon which to
build their own versions using Debian GNU/Linux.

<h2>What makes Morphix so special compared to other Live CDs</h2> 

<p>As you have seen in this book, there are a number of ways to change Knoppix to
your liking. However, these possibilities have always been, and probably always
will be, fairly limited. Knoppix was made for different goals: to detect your
hardware as fast and correct as possible, to be a good demonstration of Linux
and to include as much common-use Linux software as
possible. Morphix's goals however are different: Ease of
customization, ease of use, ease of installing. We are a lazy bunch,
but thanks to Klaus Knopper we had a solid place from which to work from.

<p>Knoppix, and most Knoppix' derivatives, are fairly monolithic in
nature: They are essentially complete ready-made filesystems all
compressed into one file. Morphix on the other hand is built up around
the idea of modules: you have one module that boots your live CD and
detects your hardware, another that contains your live CD filesystem
and zero or more extra modules that can contain minor or major changes
and additions to the system. This way, Morphix promotes the reusing of
smaller, existing modules instead of one large /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX
file. Complicated? Well, a look at a typical Morphix live CD might
help. This is the structure of Morphix 0.4-1 LightGUI, one of the
Morphix flavours:

<pre>
/base/boot.img
/base/morphix
/mainmod/MorphixMain-Light.mod
</pre>

<p>While it seems quite empty, this is how we release typical versions
of Morphix. They are quite bare but offer users (or 'morphers', as we
call ourselves, as you will notice we have a strange lingo for the
uninitiated) more possibilities to change the resulting live CD. We
will take a closer look at these and other tricks in the hack "Morphing
Morphix" later on.

<p>Morphix currently has four ready-to-burn "combined ISOs" available for
download and a list of extra modules available for whomever needs
them. All combined ISOs contain the Morphix installer, a graphical
tool for installing Morphix onto your harddisk, and a number of
other graphical and command line Morphix tools for various
purposes. Each of these live CDs has their own targeted audience--our
opinion has always been that we should offer (limited) choice to users
and as much choice as possible for developers:

<h2>Morphix LightGUI</h2>

<p>Aimed at lower-end PCs, LightGUI features the XFCE4 desktop and
contains a reasonable amount of lighter tools. It was the initial
version of Morphix, and the aim has been to keep LightGUI small enough to
have it fit on 210MB CDR(W). LightGUI includes Abiword, Gnumeric, Dillo and
Firefox. For communication, Gaim and Xchat are included, and for
photo processing the GIMP has been added.

<h2>Morphix Gnome</h2>

<p>Formerly named Morphix HeavyGUI, this flavour was for some time the
only conterpart of LightGUI. Including Gnome, OpenOffice.org, 
Mozilla, and the kitchen sink, Morphix Gnome was aimed at office users
with more recent machines. Even so, a normal Morphix Gnome ISO still
doesn't fill up the whole (650MB) CD-ROM, and recent versions weigh in at
around 500MB.

<h2>Morphix KDE</h2>

<p>Although primarily focused on GTK/Gnome, the Morphix crew acknowledges
that users might prefer KDE instead (and looking at the number of
derivatives, a lot of users do!). Morphix KDE contains the whole KDE suite of
programs, as well as Mozilla and other applications. Morphix KDE
sits inbetween LightGUI and Gnome when it comes to size, and fills up
approximately 400MB of space on your CD-ROM.

<h2>Morphix Game</h2>

<p>An odd-ball in Morphix, this flavour contains the very light IceWM and
a very large number of Open Source games. BZflag, Frozen Bubble, Freecraft
and many, many others are sure to entertain the kids (or entertain the
kid in you) for quite a few hours. Normally Morphix Game also includes
one or more demo versions or free full versions of commercial Linux
games, adding to the fun. Gaming on Linux a rarity? This hasn't been
the case for many years, no matter what kind of games you enjoy!

<p>All the official Morphix live CDs contain the Morphix installer, as
stated above. This tool allows users to easily install their Morphix
(or derivative) live CD onto a hard disk. Often overlooked, the
difference between a live CD and a hard disk install is very small
indeed. The Morphix installer is also built in a flexible manner so
that derivatives can even rebrand the Morphix installer, although the
source itself is licensed under the GNU GPL. A graphical partitioner
and series of configuration tools have been under development and are
likely to be part of Morphix by the time this book comes off the press.

<h2>Derivatives</h2>

<p>A lot has been said about the number of Linux distributions recently. What
others see as a complicated mess, we see as a healthy, messy
eco-system. Morphix has quite a few offspring
and a lot of them are specially focussed at a single group of people
(ranging from Brazilian engineers, non-profit organizations or
self-proclaimed Hackers) or are providing a localized non-English
Linux distribution (ie. Chinese, Galicia/Spanish, Hindi, Arabic), the list
goes on and on. So, if the default Morphix Live CDs aren't to your
liking take a look on www.morphix.org for a list of related
projects. Even if you start 'morphing' from one of these derivatives,
you can be sure of a base to fall back to and a design that will get
your project 'live' and updated ASAP.

<p>Happy Morphing!