Thanks for the info, HappyTux.

I gotta put the word in for Mepis.
www.mepis.org.
very nice debian unstable based distro.
It's live cd also and includes Qparted for resizing NTFS partitions.
It's installer is a little nicer than Knoppix IMHO.

Okay, where can you download Mepis? There doesn't seem to be a way to download it other than via their "premium download." If you can't try it and then decide whether to contribute, I'll pass.

Besides which, I've read a few posts on their message boards now, and Warren seems like a major league A-hole!

http://www.mepis.org/book/view/1462

free mirrors are out there.

I've been using a Debian system via knoppix hd-install for quite sometime, there were a few things I had to tweak such as setting up a perm /home dir and uninstalling a few programs and desktop environments. (ahem kde) but all in all once its installed its a pure debian system. I've not really had any problems thus far.

After an HD install does
apt-get -f dist-upgrade

Upgrade to KDE 3.2 or how is that done?

Any reason not to update to sid?

sid is the unstable branch and therefore comes with the associated risk of running software that could get broken (usually not IMO, but YMMV)

It is possible to run a mixed apt setup using a preferences file, that way if you just need to install a piece of unstable software you can append your apt-get line, for example :

apt-get install -f k3b/unstable

I good link to get you started with this process is on the Libranet, a commercial version of debian, support forum.

http://forum.libranet.com/viewtopic.php?t=1420

The setup explained there is only libranet specific for those apt sources under the Libranet heading and can be omitted easily if you are not using that distro.