Umm.. arrow keys sometimes don't work in textmode programs

-2 week n00b :shock:
After mutilating countless hd installs I decided to create an image of the partition. (Gotta break it to learn it 8)) I went to use partimage but I'm not able to use the arrow keys to select the partiton in the list (I know I can just commandline the procedure but thats not the point). At the same time the function key assignments of partimage don't work either inside bash/konsole. I was going to dismiss this as some weird isolated problem until I went to mess with apt-get upgrade. The CUPs configuration menu came up asking me to select backends but the damn arrows keys failed to work again. I checked language and keyboard layout settings and everything looks kosher. Arrow keys do work in bash to 'scroll' thru command history... what am I missing here?

After some more tinkering I've found the problem was the shared Newt library [libnewt0.51] that comes default on Knoppix 3.3

So any programs based on Newt will not fully function on knoppix 3.3 without updating. :?