Thanks to both Underscore and Markus for their responses. Learned a lot more about Linux and Knoppix - course it turned out that wasn't my problem after all. I was looking in the wrong direction. But now that i've got my feet wet I look foreward to much more use of Knoppix from now on

(I was trying to use Knoppix to run the SETI@home and Einstein@home programs after reading about it on their website. I got it to run on my first try [sheer stupid luck as it turned out] but could not duplicate this success after changing the screen resolution to 1024X768 and rebooting. I assumed that they were using way too much RAM with the bigger [and much more readable] screen. It turns out I didn't understand the directory [folder?] system under Linux as that turned out to be my problem. The RamDisk is dynamic anyway so it shouldn't really take up that much room if not needed. I think.

I have noticed the programs run much slower than they did under Windows XP. That combined with the fact the the same two processes are using considerably less RAM under Knoppix leads me to believe I haven't finished my study of Memory Management under Linux yet..)