Thanks Harry for your help.

So downloading and burning CDs is always problematic under standard Knoppix? And there's no fix to make it possible?

This is turning into an ordeal... The problem with net installations is that I have to issue a command to change the MAC address of my ethernet card. (Yes, I know ideally I should have a router, but right now I don't.) Does the Debian net install give access to a Bash command line before attempting a network connection? This wasn't possible for the net install of Suse.

When I tried a net install of Ubuntu (which is basically Debian, right?), I didn't even get that far. I got an error ("Permission denied") when trying to run ./debootstrap. I have no idea what I am doing with Debian, and searching on this error produced nothing.

At this point I am just looking for the path of least resistance to a HD-installed Linux. It's in order to keep my sanity. Downloading and burning a user-friendly distro looked like the best idea, but even that turns out impossible...

Thanks for more pointers, I do appreciate you helping me.