Thanks for the "reality check." The Konqueror and "su" issue may be due to using a persistent home from an older version of Knoppix.

The network issue is due to acpi. I have to use "acpi=force" along with "pci=usepirqmask" as kernel parameters in order to get a PCI USB card to work on this old computer, but for some reason it's interfering with the /etc/init.d/networking script. (Having to run /usr/sbin/netcardconfig after a hard disk install, once, seems to be normal. In this case, I'm having to run pump or dhclient manually on each reboot. Knoppix seems to use pump, while Kanotix uses dhclient.)

By the way, Knoppix 3.9 will take an apt-get dist-upgrade!

<edit>
The Konqueror/su issues were indeed due to using a persistent home created with Knoppix 3.8.

<edit 2>
Created a new persistent home, told Knoppix 3.9 to load it, and I'm having problems with Konsole again.