Hi @k_blues, knoppix is pretty cool. No need to switch to other distros! About bugs dont worry. I never faced them though I had installed knoppix 4 and 5 both. NEways before installing it to hardisk u need to know one thing i.e partitions. I hope u know hda1 refers to 1st partitions of primary master. If u dont then brush up about it. Thats very important.
Next to install knoppix, boot it from cd. When all ready, fire up the command terminal and type "su". This will will bring u to root mode. Here type "knoppix-installer". This will start the hardisk installation.
It will ask u all information before making final actions. It will ask u which partition to use for root (i.e "/") and swap. Dont mess up around with windows partition, and allot the non-windows partitions. i.e if u have 3 partitions, windows on hda1, then allot hda2 for root and hda3 for swap.
Next is the size, knoppix takes like 2-3 GB. SO i recommend to allot around 10 GB of space to root partitions. For swap u can give it around 500 MB if u dont use heavy stuff like ORACLE( in that case 1-1.5Gb ) .
Thats all, start the installation. Further configs like network config can be done after install too!