Anyway, please please please try Kanotix. (you have a spare box or partition?). I would no longer be linuxing without it.

You, Sis, of all folks know what I went through with the hairier than hell, I-don't-have-source-installed here on Knoppix thaing when I was trying to get the dreaded lm sensors going. I switched then to kanotix and never looked back. I have a spare 20 gig partition on the linux disk that I try out other distros on. To date, SUSE was the only thing that came close to debian IMHO. I am presently in fedora core hell on the spare partition and ready to give it up.

To kanotix/debian I hate to say it, after the initial use of 3 kano's scripts (kernel source, nvidia and kdm dpi) I no longer need them to do anything "debian" to my hard drive install. The kano script to install source patches it as well. As far as I am concerned, I am running debian sid. Of course, I am embroiled in mortal combat (or maybe it is over now with a whimper- I know he was ticked off I am not a unix admin) with a coworker trying to get me to switch to a "real" distro, namely Fedora. Of all distros, that is so far from our debian-based experience I would never recommend it. SUSE, Mandrake you can feel your way around if you been running what we have. Fedora (and Redhat I imagine) no, get a degree in unix first.

Before nuking my spare kanotix for the fedora-beast I had done apt-get dist-upgrade on it and it BOOTED and WORKED. There were a couple of held packages. On occasion I had forced the issue with no ill effects. I still prefer selective upgrades if only to keep unnecessary services from starting up that I would have to pull out and to keep things, well, the way I like them.

To answer your questions:
1. Kanotix does support dialup - there is an itsy bitsy change you have to make to some permissions. Life in general in linux land is easier if you have high speed... but you know I was on dialup up until like two months ago.
2. A question for MZI, I don't do a separate home myself and haven't seen the option in standard kanotix installing. So I would have to say, I don't think so, but mzi would know for sure.
3. I am running 2.6.8.1-kanotix-5
4. Definitely yes, kanotix has the best hardware configuring of everything I have tried to date.

Try it you will like it. You can go to debian pits and just tell them you are running sid. Yes, they bash knoppix. Some will tell you if you must, go with kanotix. Most will recommend the sarge net installer which now that I have high speed is probably an option. But I have my bughunter and don't need sarge. Sid is just fine in my book