First of all, Linux is amazing. Knoppix is my first experience with it, but I have always wanted to try it, and now that I finally got DSL I downloaded the iso quickly and burned it! I use IceWM, because KDE runs a bit slow for me, and it is all good except one or two things....

1st off.... Hard drive access... I use icewm, so to mount my harddrive I:
open root shell
mkdir /hd
mount /dev/hda1 /hd
cd /hd
ls -1
Here it displays my hard drive's contents, and it is all good, i can cd over to any directory, but, i have to start apps from root shell to be able to access the hardrive, so its kind of stupid to even have the start menu. i tried to chmod the "my documents" and some other personal directories for rwx permissions, but when i enter the command nothing at all happens. I ls -l again and the permissions are exactly the same. I also try it for individual files, and i even tried it with a 8.3 DOS filename instead of a long file name..... no go. the permissions do not change... so is there anyway to either... give root permissions to the start menu, or get chmod working right? (maybe i'm doing it wrong)
one other thing... what is the shell command for openoffice, because it doesnt appear in the icewm menu
thanks,
nick