Rob Wultsch wrote:
> How hard would it be to master a disk with an experimental kernel? Or 
> for that matter replace kde with gnome?

Just found specific answer to your windowmanager question ...
from (UNTESTED by Austin):

http://gnubox.dyndns.org:8080/~sunil/knoppix.php

6)Changing default GUI to Gnome/ icewm Changing default gui to something else is 
quite easy

   Under the chrooted environment  open the file
      /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig

   Look for the following lines
---------------------------------------

#Also read desired desktop, if any

DESKTOP="$(getbootparam desktop 2>/dev/null)"

# Allow only supported windowmanagers

case "$DESKTOP" in gnome|kde|larswm|xfce|windowmaker|wmaker|icewm|fluxbox|twm) ;; *)

   DESKTOP="KDE"; ;; esac
--------      ^^   --------------------------------------

   Change the KDE above to gnome and that is all