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[Harry Kuhman]

..... If you can't install it what good is it except to fix a broke ass XP install.

It is what it is. A Live CD. A handy way to introduce people to Linux. A great tool for file recovery (I would never actually try to "fix" an XP system with it, just get the files that I need and then reinstall a fresh copy of Xp from the original discs. Writing anything to the XP NTFS partition with Knoppix may bring down the curse of Billy Gates upon you). It's a handy way to carry a copy of Linux with you and use in a rather secure way at any location. But the link that I gave you explains the problem in trying to use it as a regular hard disk install. Some people do, but if you haven't even tried Debian yet then you have absolutely no reason to suggest that Knoppix might offer you any advantage over Debian

So, the question is, Can I install Deb and have any chance of it working on my laptop?

I don't know if you are capable of doing that or not. It's a pretty simple install though, and the best way to find out is to try it. As long as you have a high-speed internet connection that you can do a net-install from, I would suggest getting the testing version of Debian (lenny) , the i386 flavor of the net-install ISO is here. Burn it to a CD-RW so that you can reuse the disc later, then do a net install. When you are asked for the type of install, select a desktop install (this will install Gnome, but you can later install KDE or any other desktop that you want, as well as any applications that you want, with apt-get). Quite frankly, you might even want to do a few installs, just to check out your options. The install will take a little while, depending on your connection speed, But will give you an up-to-date system with no need to refer to a stack of CDs when you want to install other applications (just net-install them with apt-get).

Back when Knoppix first came out, the Debian installer (and other Linux installers) were indeed technical nightmares. One had to record all sorts of hardware data, IRQ and DMA settings and lots of other stuff, run the installer, fill in all of the technical settings, and then eventually abort the install and go back and look something up that you didn't have recorded the first time. People complained about this and when Knoppix came out some were so impressed by it's hardware detection that they advocated installing Knoppix, even though it was known even then that it was a bad idea™. People complained that if Knoppix could do it then the installers should be able to do it to. Well, for once the developers listened and they greatly improved the installers. There is (IMHO) no longer any logic at all that justifies installing Knoppix, and certainly it makes no sense to do so without even trying to install Debain (I say Debian here because it is the intended for hard disk install that Knopix is based on and if you like Knoppix you should like Debain, but there are other Linux distro alternatives too.)