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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I've run both DemoLinux and Knoppix and the main difference, when running, is that DemoLinux allows you a way to add persistance and still keep the system bootable from CD. DemoLinux can add 2 files to an existing filesystem with one for swap and one for both /home and /etc. This lets you play with the bootable CD and keep your configurations and files between boot sessions. Knoppix is all in memory, all the time. And you lose most of your data between boots. You can save your config and desktop files to floppy but that's pretty limited compared to DemoLinux's 9MB and 25MB /home filesystem in a file.
Also, Knoppix is more uptodate since it's using 2.4.18 kernel and DemoLinux is 2.2.x so Knoppix will work better with the latest hardware ( USB, etc ).
I probably missed something but those are the things that came to mind.