Lets consider the issues. Wireless support is much further behind because the manufacturers (card and chip) will not release good hardware register information to the developer community. They make their own drivers for MS systems, and most care about little else. When they do release drivers for the Linux world they are often a bad joke. My 802.11b Dlink pcmcia cards have "linux drivers" that are nearly 2 meg in size, for example! I've seen many full and very complete OS's that are smaller than that, there is absolutely no sane reason way a wireless driver should be so huge, and no sane way that a live CD like Knoppix could contain many such bloated drivers. But more importantly, Knoppix is a Live CD and intended to run as a live CD. A wireless network is intended to be configured with security to allow authorized users access, not everyone. If Knoppix was expected to boot from CD and access a wireless network with no configuration, it could only do so if users were encouraged to leave their systems wide open. This is hardly a reasonable thing to expect or for Knoppix to promote.

So, for the sake of security, it doesn't seem unreasonable for Knoppix to not access your wireless system on boot with no configuration at all. Just the opposite, it's bad form to set up a network system so this could be done by any live CD.

And this discussion certainly belongs in the network section, so I'll move it.