Quote Originally Posted by src
Thank you Harry for your reply.

No I would prefer to stick with Knoppix as everyone (more experienced users) told me that it is still the best.

I shall surely look into the debian as you have kindly suggested.

Regarding version 5.2, I understand that this is not the official release, but I hope downloading it won't violate the licensing terms. And I also hope that you shall provide support for that version.

Please correct me if I am wrong.
Because KNOPPIX is composed of software that is covered by open source and more importantly by freely-distributable licenses, it should not be a violation to download the ISO of KNOPPIX 5.2 from a torrent.

However, it appears that Klaus himself has reached an agreement for exclusive distribution of this version as a CDROM that is published with a magazine. So HE personally might not be allowed to publish the ISO on the internet, but ironically anyone else in the world (basically, anyone who is not bound by this agreement) who gets a copy of the disk can then rip it to an ISO file and redistribute it via a torrent.

The only thing that could change this would be if the CD also contained software or other content (copyrighted pictures or documents, for example) that was NOT freely distributable.

I would be very surprised if this were the case, as it would be counter to everything the KNOPPIX project has stood for in the past. Someone like Klaus would need to confirm this if you wished to be 100% certain that you are not violating license terms.