Klaus Knopper (born 1968 in
Ingelheim
Ingelheim (), officially Ingelheim am Rhein (), is a town in the Mainz-Bingen Districts of Germany, district in the Rhineland-Palatinate state of Germany. The town sprawls along the Rhine's left bank. It has been Mainz-Bingen's district seat sin ...
) is a German
electrical engineer
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
and
free software
Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...
developer.
Knopper is the creator of
Knoppix
Knoppix, stylized KNOPPIX ( ), is an operating system based on Debian designed to be run directly from a CD or DVD (Live CD) or a USB flash drive ( Live USB). It was first released in 2000 by German Linux consultant Klaus Knopper, and was one ...
, a well-known
live CD
A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete booting, bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than lo ...
Linux
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
distribution. He received his degree in electrical engineering from the
Kaiserslautern University of Technology (in
German: ''Technische Universität Kaiserslautern''), co-founded
LinuxTag in 1996 (a major
Europe
Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...
an Linux expo) and has been a self-employed
information technology
Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...
consultant since 1998. He also teaches at the Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences.
Knopper is married to Adriane Knopper, who has a
visual impairment
Visual or vision impairment (VI or VIP) is the partial or total inability of visual perception. In the absence of treatment such as corrective eyewear, assistive devices, and medical treatment, visual impairment may cause the individual difficul ...
. She has been assisting Knopper with a version of Knoppix for
blind and visually impaired people, released in the third quarter of 2007 as a live CD. Her name has been given to
Adriane Knoppix.
Adriane is a desktop or "non-graphical user interface" for blind computer beginners. It will work on any
Linux distribution
A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...
that has a screenreader (preferably SBL (Screenreader for Blind Linux Users)) and some text-based tools for Internet access and normal work.
References
External links
Klaus Knopper personal profile at Knoppix
Meet The 'No Hard Disk' Man at efytimes.com
ADRIANE - Audio Desktop Reference Implementation and Networking Environment*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Knopper, Klaus
1968 births
Living people
German computer scientists
German electrical engineers
Knoppix
People from Ingelheim am Rhein
Engineers from Rhineland-Palatinate