I was going to add this to the previous post, but forgot. For those of you running a knoppix version prior to 3.4, you don't have the icon that looks like a picture of a black computer screen (with the frame and pedestal) on the kde task bar (kicker panel). Some of you may not have a redundant T-3 connection to the internet (just a joke, folks) where the chokepoint is the ftp server you are downloading from, so you can't download every version of knoppix.

For those with earlier versions of knoppix, you get a shell by clicking on the icon that looks like a black screen (without a pedestal), which also looks like it has a shell (seashell) on one side, which is also located on the task bar (kicker panel).