Quote Originally Posted by gonzo
what's the difference between the 2?
I don't understand the question, what 2 do you speak of? And AFAIK there are at least 3 ways to attempt to install Knoppix to HD. But the forum and the faq are where I would look for the information.

If you mean between Knoppix and Debian, Knoppix is a mix of various versions of Debian and was primairaly intended for running off a Live CD. Certain decisions were made that work well when running from a Live CD, not so well once installed. On top of that the install techniques leave something to be desired, you just have to read through the forum to see how many posts there are about a network or something else that worked fine when booting from the Live CD but stopped working after an install to HD. IMHO people like to install Knoppix to HD becuase Knoppix does a great job of hardware detection and quickly comes up with a full menu of nice applications and a nice look to the GUI. But installing and updating Knoppix can be much more of a problem than installing and updating a Debian system, amoung other reasons because of Knoppix's choice to mix stable, unstable and experimental versions. Installing Debian may take a bit more work, particularly if you are relatively new to Linux, but you learn in the process and hopefully have a more stable system when you are done, as well as being more experienced and better able to set up exactly what you want.