what do I do with it?

[billy shears]

So I downloaded Knoppix and put it on a disk and everything works fine...and now I'm like "now what?" When I downloaded Knoppix, I didn't have any particular use in mind. I was bored and had never used linux before so I decided to try it out. Now that I have it, what could I do with it?

[OErjan]

websurfing; firefox, mozilla, konqueror, links...
mail; firebird, mutt...
IM; ( like with MSN, ICQ, AIM, Jabber, IRC...) gaim...
wordprocessing; abiword, openoffice...
simple games; chess, klickety, solitare...
rescuework; DDrescue, dvd/CDburning, qtparted, CFdisk, fdisk, dd, hexedit, grep...
looong list.
and you can ofcource use a USB disk/pen and create a permanent home and save configs, rescued/downloaded files...

[billy shears]

Perhaps I should have been more specific. What can I do with knoppix that I can't in windows?

[OErjan]

eeeh, that was a harder one, they both can do basically what the hardware is limited to (and sometimes if hardware is even supported).
A bootable Linux CD is what I would prefer for rescuework on a WIndows system, as the risk of Viruses affecting liniux is smaller than if it was a WIN system and a botable CD... none.

As Knoppix is a distribution of the Linux operating system (Based on Debian GNU linux) I would say that, what you do is up to you.
There are a bunch of toos for programing and debugging in several languages (C, C++, assembly...), and as you can get the sourcecode for, as far as I know, every program on the knoppix disk, you can modify to a level that is beyond what Windows can ofer.
And that opens for you to experiment.
Another thing is that it is a great environment to experiment with linux (and in some way lern UNIX) you may see it as a tool.
If you want something special there is a thing called Klik for instaling external programs to the knoppix disk.

to be honest I have not been in touch with the Windows world for a few months, and only place I feel Windows is better is when GAMES come in to equation, and then mainly as there are few Linux releases.

if you tell us/me more what you need/want we might point you in right direction, but listing everything Linux can do is... just weird.