I moved from core to knots about 5 months ago.

Unfortunately I just trusted what is advertised as I have no means to verify the code myself.

I just checked that it is really a core fork, and compiled the code myself.

About setup, I just used the same bitcoin.conf file I was using with core.

I asked here on nostr and lukedashjr himself explained to me that the standard filters are enough and I didn't need to setup them if I didn't want.