Well ... it sounds like enough RAM and swap. Here's what they say about minimum system requirements on http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-info/index-en.html:

20 MB of RAM for text mode, at least 96 MB for graphics mode with KDE (at least 128 MB of RAM is recommended to use the various office products)
According to that, you should be able to at least get into KDE, though you wouldn't want to run OpenOffice.

-- Ed