The thought just occurred to me that the "root shell" is the thingy under K-menu -> Knoppix -> Root Shell which doesn't work for me while I'm not in sudoers.
I added the K-menu -> System -> More Programs -> Konsole Super User Mode
That's also the reason for the change in schema, I really dislike the default BlackOnYellow

PS. Instead of launching xkill try: killall xmms