As an update to anyone who might read this. I got knoppix7 CD up and running and its much slicker. I got both Skype and Spotify working right out the box by adding the repos to the sources list and both apt-get installed without any issue.

I haven't read much about the changes between knoppix 6 and 7 but knoppix 7 appears a lot more Debian friendly when it comes to installing any .deb file. Where as before, although being Debian based knoppix seemed to have its own slightly different way of doing things and peculiarities that meant you could not just install programs as you would with any other Debian based system.

All in all very happy and impressed.