Ok, most of your questions can be found on google. Start on www.google.com
type in knoppix faq and it returns:

http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/General_FAQ

Commands dmesg and grep are linux commands, you can open a terminal and type
man grep
man dmesg
but generally man (short for manual pages) are sometimes quite cryptic and hard to understand,
all you need to know about the command is its searches kernel messages and filters output to just
the hard drives.

Knoppix 5.3.1 is only available DVD, 5.1.1 is CD version but Alpha systems remasteredmknoppix
5.3.1 DVD to become a CD version. There is a link on th remastering section but its here for convenience:

http://www.nabble.com/Release%3A-VMKnoppix-20080519-(based-on-KNOPPIX5.3.1-CD-size)-to17422128.html


...sorry above link is for vmware you need this link:

http://www.rcis.aist.go.jp/project/k.../index-en.html

The seconditem down is knoppix CD with LCAT acceleration

It defaults to Japanese so booth with lang=uk for english