Hi all!
Knoppix is getting better from version to version. But there still exist some grave problems. About one of these I want to grumble here, about the menu. The menu is a big mess! It is bloated and overloaded. There are a lot of entries which a newbie never uses. I am not a beginner. I use and develop for linux for severeal years. But I try to see it from the view of a novice in linux/computers.
People who have no experience in using a computer don't know what bc, gv, kview or xine is. The same is valid for windows users. These people know what a "Media Player" or an "Image Viewer" is, but they also can't deal with bc, gv or xine.
Another issue is number of entries in the menue. One reason is that some programs are two or three times present in the menu in different submenues. It is enough when a program is just ONE time at the right place present. Another reason is the presence of entries for programs which shouldn't be in the menu. What should a novice do with bc or with dc? A novice wants a graphical calculator like kcalc. An experienced user can still use bc when he calls it within a shell and I'm shure that the experienced users will call command line tools in the command line and not with a click in the menu. Ok it is "nice" when the menu shows that a lot of progrms are installed, but that makes the menu unusable. In my opinion the most command line tools can be removed from the menu.
For a usabitlity enhancement I would also change the entries themselves. For novices it would be better to change the entries as follows:
Xpdf (xpdf) -> PDF Reader (xpdf)
xine media player (xine media player) -> Video Player (xine)
kview (picture viewer) -> Picture Viewer (kview)
ding (ding) -> Dictionary (ding)
k3b (CD & DVD Burning) -> CD & DVD Burning (k3b)
and so on...
As you can see the entries change form "program name (task related description)" to "task related description (program name)". Most novices in linux and using a computer at all can't deal with the most program names (e.g. k3b), but they all can deal with the task descriptions. So the task descriptions should be in the first place.

I hope these suggestions will help Knoppix to improve the usability.

Cheers, Martin