hi crashed,

i think i mislead you there- when i said it shuts the box down i meant when i logged out it switched to runlevel 0 and took me to the "...remove CD and hit Enter" prompt. never actually "powered off" the machine.

yea, i found out what the "knoppix style" install was all about. however, i had a slight problem with 'knoppix-installer' when i went to switch back over to "debian style" install. the first time i installed it to my hard drive i used "knx-install" and it prompted me to use CUPS and DHCP 'n all that. when i tried the 'knoppix-installer' it was nice and let me make new users, but it never set up the rest of the stuff like DHCP, CUPS, etc. is this normal? i ended up killing it and going back and using the 'knx-install' again.

trying to figure out the similarities and differences between 'apt' and 'emerge' is what i'm currently looking into. the debian style install has given me one helluva nice system with the least ammount of fuss i've ever put into ANY linux distro. two thumbs WAY UP to the knoppix guys on a great piece of work.