This is purely a personal opinion & does not reflect the official opinion of Knoppix.net nor does it reflect the opinion of the Knoppix developers. My recommendation is based on the multitude of problems I see in the forums. I believe beginning Linux users or newbies should not install Knoppix to the hard drive. I also must mention that yes Knoppix is based off of Debian, but Debian developers, mentors & helpers do not consider a Knoppix hard drive install to be truly Debian. Thus, they will not attempt to support a Knoppix installed HD system.

A car is not designed for a good night of sleep. You can sleep in a car but unless you are dead tired, it is something that probably should not be done. Knoppix is not designed to be installed to the hard drive. It is designed to be a bootable CD. Sure it CAN be installed to the HD but it unless you are very experienced, it is something that should not be done. Or in other words, a hammer is a good hammer but make a poor knife.

There are email mailing lists, howto guides, & forums where people are telling others that a Knoppix HD install is OK for newbies. I feel that they may not be fully informed and may cause more problems that they fix. A Knoppix install on a HD is very difficult to administrate, add/remove software & get new drivers. Some may feel that they can deal with the oddities & the quirks, but if it were all easy, then why are there so many people with problems after a HD install. A Knoppix HD install will most likely break something, usually networking. A perfect real example of such is this topic within the past week: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19522 "Help please - how do I install a ethernet card driver???" Read that quickly & you will realize that we had to support this user with way more technical geeky commands than you would normally find in a HD install of a normal distro.

So who cares about my opinion on whether or not Knoppix should be installed to the HD. What do Debian developers & users say in regards to the HD install of Knoppix? Debian users/devs on #debian on IRC freenode.net deny support to Knoppix users & tell them to go to Knoppix.net for suppport. See also these Debian mailing list posts about knoppix.
2004
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/.../msg01452.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/.../msg01494.html

2005
http://lists.debian.org/debian-mento.../msg00203.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-mento.../msg00208.html

It is my opinion, that if new user want a boot from CD drive then they should use a Debian based live CD like Knoppix. If they want to install Knoppix to the HD (which is really a modified Debian) then skip Knoppix & install Debian 3.1 (released Mon June 6). If they want a pre-configured user-oriented desktop PC, not server, distro based on Debian then use Ubuntu (GNOME desktop) or Kubuntu (KDE desktop) or see RedHat backed Fedora Core 4 (released June 13). If they want a real noob friendly desktop Debian based distro & are willing to pay a small yearly price for support & software updates then they can use Linspire.