Knoppix

Knoppix is a class apart.
Knopper's educational tool surpasses the best Live distros offered by those calling themselves professionals in Distro making.
What strikes one after popping in the Knoppix CD is the brimming Start Menu. Unlike other live distros, Knoppix doesn't seem to have cut corners to be able to fit into a CD. It is KDE based and the sleek, lean UI rivals that of FC. Besides KDE, it also offers the ICE Windows Manager which is all business, and hence appealing.
After dealing with the retarded inbuilt CD burner in Nautilus in Mandriva, the K3B burner in Knoppix was a real surprise and pleasure. The sleek interface was quite well received.
Unfortunately, knoppix does not have an easy way to install the CD contents to the hard disk. The other live distros have a prominent install to disk icon right on the desktop, no Knoppix. An online search revealed the "knoppix-installer" tool which could be used. Compared to the polished interface, the tool is jagged, and not just visually (But knopper does not recommend installation, so can't blame him). For one, it is not a straight forward tool that can be compared to other distros. The installer is a common staging area for other tools: like Qtparted to create a partition, another tool to configure the options of the installation, and finally another tool to do the install per se. A real let down compared to the rest of the Knoppix experience, the installation is not for the faint of heart (or full of data). Qtparted, the partition tool, can be careless in handling paritions, and as in my case can be cause for grief (subject of another post).
But as a live distro, it offers unparalleled features. The concern that an optical drive is continuously running makes long sessions with Knoppix a conscience pricking experience.