I've been experimenting with Knoppix (version 3.3, I think) and it's very impressive.

This is a summary of how I got my P166-MMX with a trackball on /dev/ttyS1 to work with Knoppix.

At the boot prompt I enter: knoppix 2 lang=us desktop=xfce nousb nopcmcia.

Apparently Knoppix doesn't like serial mice. Starting at run level 2 allows a user to run gpmconfig, and also
permits you to access a text editor (I use mcedit) to change the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file so that X will recognize your mouse.

I tried using the expert boot option, but changing the mouse settings that way didn't work.

The following steps could be done in an xterminal, although I prefer to do them before an X session.

Once Knoppix is loaded, to enable my modem I type:

setserial /dev/ttyS? irq #

Replacing the ? and # with the appropriate numbers. Later, I'll setup the actual connection using the tools in X.

To set up printing using CUPS:

/etc/init.d/apache start
/etc/init.d/cupsys start

Now I can type:

lynx localhost:631

to configure my printer, or I can go to X and point Mozilla/Konqueror at localhost:631.

Now for the best part: Loading kernel modules.

I discovered that there are quite a few kernel modules available with Knoppix. to see them, type:

modconf

and you'll see the list.

The ones I'm especially interested in are the iptables/packet filtering modules, the parport module, and
the sg and ppa scsi driver modules for using an older Iomega zip drive.
What I'm going to do is load the modules I want, then copy them from /lib/modules to /mnt/floppy, so I can have them available when and if I need them.

Almost forgot: If you haven't gone into X yet, you can get there by typing:

startx

or:

xinit

if you're a purist .