I just spent the past two hours figuring out this exact problem, hopefully my experience can help others. First of all, Knoppix detects all hardware with no problem (Sony Vaio laptop with Realtek 8139 ethernet controller and D-Link 650 WiFi card) and installs the right drivers for them. If you look in the wlan configuration file under /etc/pcmaia/wlan-ng.opts, you will see that it's looking for an access point with the SSID of "linux-wlan"

<quote>
#=======INFRASTRUCTURE STATION START===================
# SSID is all we have for now
AuthType="opensystem" # opensystem | sharedkey (requires WEP)
# Use DesiredSSID="" to associate with any AP in range
DesiredSSID="linux-wlan"
</quote>

Well, obviously the SSID of my access point (D-Link 713P) is not "linux-wan", so I went in there and change it to "linux-wlan", reboot the router, and restart Knoppix, voila! wireless network up and running.

I think the preferable solution is to have Knoppix look for the SSID of "default" which is the default value for D-Link 713P access point, not sure if this is the case for other access points. That way, no change is required at all. But I'm still extremely impressed with the way Knoppix works, keep up the fine work.