"And none shines brighter than Knoppix, the brainchild of German
IT consultant Klaus Knopper; now up to version 6.0, Knoppix
provides the best live CD and a DVD which is also installable.
"One of Knoppix' major strengths is its hardware detection; I
have tried it on a range of PCs with all kinds of different
hardware and never found it to fail.
"Another plus point of Knoppix is that it is based not merely on
Debian, but on the bleeding edge unstable stream of Debian. The
latest software is available in a well-crafted mix.
"Normally, when a geek has legendary powers in one area, one
does not expect fancy and neat interfaces as well. Knopper is an
exception in this regard - the guts of Knoppix are solid and it
also has an extremely good-looking desktop design."