Well, flip. Seems to be working now.

I redid the PH as before, fresh in /dev/hdb5
installed Firefox per SunnyB's link, changing install location to home
created a link on my desktop for the firefox shell script
Saved configuration at /dev/sda1
rebooted using knoppix26 home=/dev/hdb5 myconfig=/dev/sda1

All is well.

Thank you SunnyB and eco2geek for all your help