i got it working thanks to someone in another part of the forum, thanks to anyone who took the time to read this though.
alright, im here, obviously, because i dont know as much about linux as i definitley should being a computer science major. Due to limited hard drive space (being a study abroad student i could only bring a laptop, my real machine is back home in the states), knoppix seemed like the way to go.
However, when i put the cd and go to boot knoppix it goes like this:
boot: knoppix
scanning for USB/firewire devices ... Done.
Enabling DMA acceleration for: hda [toshiba MK6021GAS]
Enabling DMA acceleration for: hdc [SD-R2512]
Looking for CDROM in: /dev/scd0
then it freezes, it never makes it past that point.
if i boot: failsafe, it will load into knoppix, then about a minute into it the whole OS freezes.
I've downloaded it twice (thinking it may have been a bad download the first time around), and made about 5 cds of it, but same problem no matter what. If anyone can provide any help, I would greatly appreciate it.
i got it working thanks to someone in another part of the forum, thanks to anyone who took the time to read this though.
Good that you managed. I had just finished reading your question when I saw that
you are up and running now. Congratulations.
What happened?
/Donald
it apparently didn't like dms at all. Booting knoppix nodms makes everything work fine, well the bare minimums anyway. Im working on getting sound to work now
Thanks for the NODMS (shouldn't it be NODMA?) tip.
Regarding SOUND:
I used the KDE control center to get sound up and running; at first
it was shut off, and I chose "sound system"->enable
"Test" worked, but when I tried to play the KDE-sounds, nothing
happened.
I then chose external sound player, and found that the "artsplay"
program was one which worked (I had an inkling from other
installations, though!)
Then it seemed that two sound systems were competing. At
one time I had to disable/enable again in order to get it to work
again.
Normally I run Gentoo and I have arduously installed the ALSA
sound system. The new 2.6.7 series should be easier to deal with
as the alsa sound system is default and included in the kernel.
/Regards
yes its nodma, typo i suppose.
i plan on spending a better portion of today working on resolving the sound issue, ill let you guys know how it works out.

Gigabyte 4U AI Server 10x Nvidia GPU 2x Xeon Gold 6150 36 Core 2.7GHz DDR4 RAM
$1499.00
Dell EMC PowerEdge R440 Xeon silver 4215 2.5GHz 16 GB ram 2x 550W PSU No HDD
$275.00
867959-B21 HPE ProLiant DL360 G10 CTO Server W/ 2x 865414-B21 1x 840140-001
$245.00
Dell PowerEdge FX2s + 8x FC430 Blades 16x E5-2630v4 160 Cores Rails No PSU/RAM
$699.00
Dell PowerEdge C4130 1U AI GPU Server | 2x E5-2690 v3 | 64gb Ram | 2x 1600W
$524.99
Dell PowerEdge C4130 1U AI GPU Server | 2x E5-2680 v3 | 32gb Ram | 2x 1600W
$409.99
Dell PowerEdge C4130 1U AI GPU Server | 2x E6-2699 v3 | 128gb RAM | 2x 1600W
$899.99
Dell Poweredge R730xd 12LFF 2*2660v4 4*1Gbe h730 2x 750W Server CTO
$308.00
RDS CAL - Remote Desktop Services Windows Server 2019 50 User/Device Connections
$63.00
1U Server Intel Xeon E3-1240 V5 3.5Ghz 4C 32GB RAM 2x M.2 2280 OCP RJ45 Rails
$310.00