booting on Intel Mac

[gcentauri]

I am trying to boot an OS called hikarunix that is based on Knoppix and DSL. This may not be the best place to ask, but it is the most active forum I could find. I have found that for portability purposes, trying to boot on Intel Macs has become easier to do than on a PC. Unfortunately I have only had one success so far.

So I was wondering if anyone had tried booting a live CD on one of the Intel Macs and what issues and solutions had come up.

The first time I tried, I actually changed the startup disk in the system preferences and restarted that way. It actually booted the whole way, except the mouse didn't work and I didn't know what to do from there. But unless you are authorized, you can't change the startup disk on a computer. So that wouldn't work on public computers. So then I tried booting from the disk by holding C during startup. The boot process starts and goes along fine until I run into some issues with xauth and xinit.

I get two tries at xauth: creating new authority file. then it says "giving up". then i have 2 errors, xinit: no such file or directory, and xinit: no such process.

then i get some kind of prompt thing, related to DSL i believe dsl@tty1[dsl]$

not sure if anyone can help. i'd love to be able to have my own 'workstation' that i can carry around with me while i'm out and about, since my only computer is an old apple imac running OS 9, i can't do much with that these days. i like the idea of knoppix, and i found it through this hikarunix OS which is loaded with programs for learning and playing GO, which is how I got there. I'm a newbie to all of this, but I am intrigued, and want to learn. i like the freedom linux seems to offer, so i'm just trying to get my foot in the door.

thanks

grant

[gcentauri]

Update:

I have found that when you hold OPTION to choose the OS at startup, my live CD boots up fine, except I still have no mouse.

Is there anything I can do within a terminal to setup the mouse?

I also didn't get an internet connection, couldn't detect a supported network card. Is that just to be expected since I'm trying to run this on an Apple?