Quote Originally Posted by mithrill
Is there any way to reduce the noise from the CD-Rom drive when running Knoppix from CD?
As far as I know, there is not throttling software available under Linux. Under MS-DOS, there's SlowCD: http://www.ibsensoftware.com/files/SlowCD104.zip, which does come with asm-source.

Your other two options are to try burning a couple more discs (maybe other brands) that might be better-balanced, or find a Samsung CD-ROM drive; as far as I know, that's the only brand that has dynamic balancing. It's easy to tell which Samsung drives have this feature. They use steel shot for this, so the drives rattle when tilted or shaken (gently).