Hello im sick of windows and trying to transfer onto a linux os but having a couple questions.. First off I have a version of Knoppix live cd burned it my self I have 2 fairly strong computers in my house they had trouble reading it but now that I tried it on my old laptop (366mhz) it booted up fine, the problem is that my cd reader isnt strong so it always kicks in and performance goes down. I also tried to install a copy of Ubuntu which I did some partioning and when it was installing the base system it said that it there was some sort of error, writing the cd at lower disk speed may help. So i did the first time it was done at 52x and then i redid it at 8x and still had problems. So I am wondering about a few things any help would be greatly apreciated.

-If I were to re-write Knoppix live cd at lower disc speed would my computer handle it better then one thats on a higher one?
-I have 2 things showing up on my Knoppix desktop saying hd partions or somthing alont those lines, is there a way I could use theese too help my knoppix run better if so how would I go about doing that?
-Also would any have a hunch on what could be preventing me from installing ubuntu?

Thanks in advance,
Th3 Tr00p3r

Welcome.

A couple of things you have to understand.

Knoppix is a live CD. That means it doesn't touch your hard drive at all. Its speed depends solely on how fast data can be read from your CD-ROM drive and how much RAM you have.

Now, it's true that burning at slower speeds helps (I usually go as slow as 4x), but you could also have a bum downloaded .iso. That's what happened to me the first time I downloaded Ubuntu. It's a huge file (700 MB), so it's easy for the file to get corrupted during download. Because of my bum download, Ubuntu's installer kept freezing at 79%. At first I thought it was Ubuntu, but then I downloaded a new ISO, and it worked fine.

Keep at it.

Oh I c, Are there any versions of linux you could recomend to install that are fairly easy?

you might wanna check out mini slack
it's a small download (about 400mb), based on slackware, and offers tons of additional programs you can add as you go...very stable, very fast...lots of documentation available...

*edit

also, distrowatch offers tons of info about all the different distros....a nice place to visit

To be perfectly honest, most Linux distros are easy to install. The question is really--do they recognize your hardware? Also, for modest specs on a computer, you probably want something light (Damn Small Linux, for example). If I had a modest spec computer, I'd probably use Ubuntu with an XFCE desktop (instead of the usual Gnome).