Well, I've run into a snag with debian and device drivers.
My IBM NIC has apparently stopped functioning 100%. It still
gets recognized ands the driver loads, but has itermittent
functionality (mostly off). So I picked up a dlink (it is an
8139too). Unfortunately, the version of debian I loaded with
Bonzai, and also stock debian, do not have the yenta_socket
driver. For some reason the dlink (dfe690) only works if you
have a yenta_socket driver. So I took the plunge and made the
knoppix install work on my laptop, except now X doesn't work.

Anyone running a debian version that has the yenta_socket
driver? 

I suppose I could always return the dlink and try a
different NIC, but 8139too should work. Even the 8139too drivers
that don't work actually list my NIC as supported (I did a hex
dump of the dirver). I suppose I could go through the the process of doing a stock debian install 
with all 7 cds and then upgrade the kernel
and modules. But somehow, I feel that is a rather major project.
The way I see this is a bug in debian and not the driver, and
"stable" shouldn't have bugs like this, pcmcia NICs need to work or 
you're dead in the water. To me this should be second in priority
after fixing kernel bugs. I'm very disappointed. Debian was looking
so robust.

Well, just another day in the life,
Brian