I share your frustration. Read that Knoppix was supposed to be one of the best di stros for hardware recognition, so downloaded 5.1. For sure it seems to have lots of software, including some of the very latest.

D-Link DWL-G650+ is a normal WLAN card of some popularity and is now several years old. Not recognised, no lights at all. Similarly, a D-Link USB DWL-G122 did not work

For me with this card, Freespire worked out of the box. There is a new version due during January.

I'm not posting the Knoppix computer readout requested by the moderators because I'm having to use Freespire to get on the net.

One last comment please: to echo what so many have already said in many distro forums, there is no point in putting out a distro unless it all works. Sure a small percentage of people will enjoy battling the software but the majority (around 95%?) will simply go with Windows or Mac so that they can use their computer.