Linked by Alexander Antoniades on Thu 5th Dec 2002 21:58 UTC
It's easy to grow increasingly cynical the more you follow "innovation" in operating systems and software. New releases often turn out to be nothing more than reinventing, or repackaging, the wheel, with new icons and steeper system requirements. Yet every now and then persistence pays off and that lengthy download or poorly written web site delivers something truly amazing and faith in the future of computing is, albeit temporarily, restored. I experienced such a sensation a couple of months ago when I downloaded the CD-ROM based, Linux distribution known as Knoppix. 
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Mit, from distrowatch.com, they have an excellent interview with Klaus Knopper (http://www.distrowatch.com/interview-knoppix.php):
" The idea of a complete OS running from a bootable CD is not a new one. Apple used to supply such a disk with its OS prior to MacOS X and Linux has had DemoLinux, SuSE Live-Eval and CoolLinux, just to name a few. What made you create another one and what differentiates Knoppix from other similar products?
>>>
I wanted to learn how bootable CDs work and once a base system was running, I added stuff that I needed for my personal use, like hardware auto-detection and automatic start-up of a pre-configured desktop. When you are teaching computer classes, the PCs for students are not always installed in the way you need it. So, having a bootable CD with me with a complete installation, made a lot of things easier. Also, considering the fact that notebooks can get stolen or broken easily, carrying a bootable CD around is way less of an effort.
Knoppix was not planned to be released as another Linux distribution, and I still consider it being more a personal collection of tools that fit my needs rather than a "product", though it can be (and is being) used as base for many other projects now. Hence the name "Knopper's *nix". My friends from LinuxTag e.V. convinced me to make the project open to the public, and provided mailing lists, a forum and an upstream location.
The other bootable CD projects you mentioned are all fine work and perfectly fit the purpose they are designed for. I have good contacts with DemoLinux, and occasionally the two projects may benefit from each other's work.
So being asked about the differences to other products, I don't really know how to answer this. Each one has its specialities. Knoppix may have a good hardware detection (resulting from a lot of email with reports and workarounds for difficult hardware from many people), but (yet) lacks features like hooks to partly-harddisk-installed directories (which DemoLinux has) or extended configuration options or non-free software-components (and proprietary kernel modules) that may be present on other vendors' CDs. The downloadable version of Knoppix should be "freely re-distributable for non-commercial and commercial purpose". That's why some software is not included on Knoppix, which may be present on other CDs. "
Thats it !