Is it possible for you to try a wired connection first? I'm not at all new to Linux, but, if possible, I would avoid trying to establish a wireless connection before having checked that a wired one works with the equipment and the OS (Knoppix) version. Also, you should Google on Linux and your wireless USB, to check if and how it is supported.
Posting here, it is helpful to get the network-relevant lines of the output of the command dmesg - they tell you and us a lot about what Knoppix has/has not detected.