Knoppix is a live CD and a great way to get experience with Linux, but it's not an ideal system when you start installing drivers, upgrading the kernel or making other changes. Have you considered installing Debian etch (the current tersting version of Debian, intended for hard disk)? I clerarly don't have enough information here to tell you how well your notebooks hardware is supported under Linux, but you seem to have software that you can try to use, you just don't have a good platform for making the changes with.

Remastering is a skill that could certainly be handy and if your goal is to gain skill at remastering then good luck with it. But if your goal is to get Linux and your wireless connection working on your notebook, then I expect that you will have a much better experience with Debian than with Knoppix when it comes to making changes like this.