I think I may have figured out how to do things from the virtual terminals to affect the X screen.
The vt for X is 6 so we can do:
chvt 6 to switch to the virtual terminal 6
Next we need to have a little delay, so let's add sleep 4 (you can also use 2 if you think that's a bit faster)
We also need to add "export DISPLAY=:0" to set the X display.
Then to change the user, we use "sudo -u knoppix "
So to do xrandr and change the resolution: (this is pretty useful when you mess around with screen resolutions that cause a blank screen)
Hit CTRL+ALT+F4 to switch to VT 4: then type
chvt 6; sleep 4; export DISPLAY=:0; sudo -u knoppix xrandr
chvt 6; sleep 4; export DISPLAY=:0; sudo -u knoppix xrandr --output HDMI-1 --mode 800x600
To launch terminator:
chvt 6; sleep 4; export DISPLAY=:0; sudo -u knoppix terminator &
To open the main menu:
chvt 6; sleep 4; export DISPLAY=:0; sudo -u knoppix lxpanelctl menu
Dell PowerEdge R720 Server - 2x8c CPU,256Gb RAM, 128Gb SSD/3x900Gb SAS, Proxmox
$340.00
HP ProLiant DL360 G9 Server 2x E5-2660v3 2.60Ghz 20-Core 96GB P440ar
$304.35
DELL PowerEdge R730XD 24x 2.5" Server Dual 750W Dual Heatsink - BareBones TESTED
$269.99
Supermicro 4U 36 Bay Storage Server 2.4Ghz 8-C 128GB 1x1280W Rails TrueNAS ZFS
$712.98
Intel Xeon Gold 6140 SR3AX 2.3GHz 18-Core Processor CPU
$39.99
Intel Xeon E5-2697A V4 2.6GHz CPU Processor 16-Core Socket LGA2011 SR2K1
$39.99
Intel Xeon E5-2680 v4 2.4GHz 35MB 14-Core 120W LGA2011-3 SR2N7
$17.99
SR1XP Intel Xeon E5-2680 v3 12 Core 30MB 2.5GHz LGA 2011-3 A Grade Processor
$5.09
HP Workstation Z640 2x Xeon E5-2623V4 32GB Ram Dual 256GB SSD K420 Linux GA
$234.98
Rare WaterCooled HP Z800 Workstation Dual Xeon X5680 16GB RAM 120GB SSD Nvidia
$279.56