knoppix hardware detection, on any distro
 

Maybe not any, but can someone explain how to install knoppix detection on a debian 3.0 install?

Any reason you can't just install Knoppix?
Or maybe use Mepis, which is Knoppix-based?

it is actually possible to install debian from a system that has booted into
knoppix. check out

http://www.inittab.de/manuals/debootstrap.html

basically it allows you to install debian onto hardware that is detected by
knoppix during startup. i guess the only problem might be when finally
you have to boot again. The debian system will boot using the kernel that
was installed from debian, which might not recognise the hard drive.
i sudgest http://www.backports.org/ where you can find a new kernel
for older debian releases.

Its really the autdetectioin and configuration I need. Debians is good, but knoppix I really don't have to configure anything.