I'm not sure why you would start off installing an old version. I would recommend that if you are going to do a new install that you start with 1.10.4 (current stable as of this writing).
martonem 1. Can notes on open tickets be separated into worknotes (i.e. only seen by agents) and comments (i.e. seen by submitter/client).?
Yes. Internal (or as you call them work) notes are added to a ticket two ways. By the Agent emailing a response to the ticket email (alerts needs to be turned on to do this), or by using the UI and clicking on the "Post Internal Note" tab on the ticket view and entering the text that they want to add.
martonem Can Knowledge base articles be attached to tickets easily such that re-directing a client to view and follow the article can be accomplished within the ticket.
Not really. Knowledgerbase is more like a self help area right now. You can always go to the knowledge base, get the url and link it. Each KB article has an ID. Links look like: http://yourdomain.tld/scp/faq.php?id=8 so you would want to replace the /scp in the url with /kb [because your on the admin panel]. Or you can use Canned responses. Canned responses can be selected from a drop down when you are viewing a ticket. You can make your own custom canned responses (and include images, etc). You could also have a canned response for each really useful entry in the KB (and it could either contain the same information or a short blurb and the url to the kb article).
martonem 3. Can there be a knowledgebase for customers and a separate one for agents? The agent one would have more technical how-to than end-user KB.
Yes. KB articles can be posted as public or internal. Internal means that Users cannot get to it, and Agents can.
martonem 4. Can agents determine how much email they get from the system? That is, if some prefer to get almost no email and just stay logged into the portal vs those on-site who want notices?
No, this is decided at the admin level of osTicket (You would go to Admin panel -> Settings -> Tickets -> Alerts and Notices). If a department does not want alert emails you can suppress it at the department level (You would go to Admin panel -> Agents -> Departments -> The Department you want to edit, and edit the Alerts and Notices). Lastly if you have a Team [which can be an inter-department group of Agents] that doesn't want assignment alerts you can disable it at the Team level. (You would go to Admin panel -> Agents -> Teams -> The team you want to edit, and uncheck Assignment Alert.)
Those were some good questions. ? I hope that my answers clarify things for you.
