kdm (or gdm, or xdm) is normally started via /etc/inittab in run level 5. In Knoppix, run level 5 runs "startx" as knoppix instead.

To get a proper kdm environment, you'd have to configure kdm (obviously) then change the inittab to reflect what you want.

You can use the boot process to run a knoppix.sh script on the floppy drive (and with 3.2, perhaps on a hard drive or USB drive?). This script could use rsync with the backup options to copy the new /etc/inittab into place, then change runlevels. Seems pretty brutal, but it would work.

The reason it has to be brutal (in some way or other) is because /etc/init is the first job created by the kernel, and then run. Once it is running, changing the contents of /etc/inittab are not reflected by init.

Changing the init level would be:

init 4

...or whatever you choose. You could also re-use run level 5 and just make sure that the startx process initially started by runlevel 5 doesn't exit cleanly (otherwise, it'll reboot!).

Now that I think about it.... when knoppix.sh runs, startx has not yet started: changing /etc/inittab and telling init to reload init 5 just might work:

telinit q

Not sure. Try it (or I will)