Thanks Uryoces I'll check it out! I don't actually mind re-doing windows that much... it's allllll the applications.

So would you recommedn Red Hat? Or any other distros? I'm looking at SuSE also... in spite of all the distro flame-wars it's never been apparent to me that there's a huge difference between any of the choices. I've decided to dual-boot the new machine... I'm going to shelve the old system temporarily so I can use the Windows license off that one, but I want to get more familiar with Linux as a desktop OS. I've got a few years under my belt running a mail/web server on it with command-line mode only.

I don't really follow the differences between distros all that closely. The tools that I personally use would be pretty much identical in all of them.

I like what Red Hat has done as a company, treating open source correctly and developing a business model around it that works. Now that they have shown a profit and gotten consistent earnings, it looks like they will be around for a while and aren't a "bubble" company.

Use Red Hat, because they've done a good job at making it possible for a relatively new user to use it. All these distros had it wrong - setup isn't the issue. It's making it usable as a desktop.

SuSE is nice, but it *is* different. Use whatever you're comfortable with. init modes are different on SuSE, for instance. 2 is multiuser, whereas it's 3 under Red Hat. init files are in different places. Red Hat is the most popular, so it's easier to find RPMs for when you don't feel like downloading 30 megs of source to spend an hour compiling when you could just snag a 15 meg binary.

Red Hat 9 is actually a pretty usable distribution. I'm impressed with it, and run it on two machines (neither of which is a "main" machine, but both of which get a whole lot of use).

I'd recommend playing with each for a week or two before settling on one. That way you can find which works for you. And since you really need to install Linux after Windows anyway, it'll be no problem to switch.

Another feather in Red Hat's cap is Red Hat Network (RHN). Although they've switched to making you answer a survey every month or two for their free single-machine accounts, it's a nice feature to have.

A daemon on your 'puter checks in with RH every few hours to see if there are updates, bug fixes, etc. available. If there are, you get an email explaining the problem and the fix. If you decide you need it, open up the GUI tool, click through the prompts, and your system is up-to-date. You don't even need to reboot unless there's a kernel update.

You can also update your system by logging in to the website and choosing which patches to apply. The next time your 'puter checks in, it applies the patch. Of course, for just a desktop system, this won't be a huge issue (except for kernel patches to fix security holes), but for someone like me on the other side of the world and no one at home who knows enough about my server to maintain it, it's been wonderful.

OK, I'm convinced. After doing further reading, and on the recommendations here, I decided to go for the Red Hat Network. I'm downloading the ISOs even as we speak. (This is also partially a work project so I can justify doing some exploration!)

Oh and one thing that really pushed me over the edge was the Windows licensing structure. I've never bought a "new" copy of Windows before. I can't believe the price! $250 and they aren't even offering any academic discounts. They're definitely in bed with the manufacturers, because it's clear they're doing everything they can to discourage "build-your-own" hobbyists from getting lefit copies.

Ah, well.. it's academic for a couple weeks it looks like... the place I ordered my stuff from is not shipping it till next week apparently. ("Backed up for the 4th of July", they said. I'm not even going to ask how a one-day holiday backed them up a week. Yeah, I know, I was taking a risk.)

OK, I confess myself to be thoroughly impressed. I started by loading Red Hat 9 on an old laptop at work. (I want to investigate the feasibility of using Linux Terminal Server in some places where we want to have some computers for basic browsing and word processing, but there's really no security so we wouldn't want to put anything valuable in terms of hardware.) The last time I used linux with a GUI was in 1998. The whole process seemed so pointless (I was setting up a web/mail server box) that I never bothered with it again. Things have come so far!! Not only did it detect my wireless card (and believe me, PCMCIA used to be a bitch), it even automatically picked up my compact flash card reader when I plugged it into the USB. I'm definitely going to dual-boot when my new hardware comes in--I'd consider going cold-turkey but the wife isn't that adventurous. I only have three complaints so far:

1. Video--I can't get it to go into 1024x768 mode. I don't care much tho--on this old thing it will only do 256 colors in 1024x768. If I want 16 bit color I have to stick with 800x600.
2. Audio--no sound. I think I found the right module to load for it, but it's too late to do it tonight! :cool:
3. The trackpad--I absolutely hate the feature where you tap the trackpad and it duplicates a button click. I often end up clicking things by accident. But I'm not (yet) clear how to turn it off.

Good luck getting the last of your problems fixed. Often things which should be very simple take a lot of digging around in Linux, which unfortunately will probably continue to be the case for years to come. As much attention as it's gotten in the backroom, it's still not ready for primetime in the consumer market, and drivers for much hardware is still written by hackers instead of the company that makes it.

Video resolution -- this used to be an absolute nightmare only a short while ago. I spent a week trying to get anything besides 640x480x256. Turns out I had to edit some obscure text config file to manually input the supported refresh rates of my monitor (thank God I still had its owners manual to retrieve this info) because the auto-config had gotten one of them a fraction of a MHz off. With RH9 it isn't nearly as bad, but unfortunately, laptops usually have more obscure video chipsets and thus it's more difficult to find updated drivers for them.

Trackpad -- I'm guessing it just loaded a generic PS/2 mouse driver, which is what the trackpad appears as without its special drivers. And without a specific driver for your trackpad, there's probably no way to turn off the tap-clicking. I think most laptops use a Synaptics Touchpad, but I don't know if they make Linux drivers.

I'm not even going to try, except maybe for the sound--this is just an old one we had at work. The point is mostly for me to familiarize myself. When school starts I'll probably reformat it and put its original installation of Winblows 98 on it to use as a spare when people's regular desktops are busted & can't be fixed quickly.

OK, I did it. I ordered an Asus A7-N266 motherboard, an Athlon XP 2200+ processor, and and Codegen case with 400W power supply and 2 cooling fans. With any luck it'll be here in time for me to put it together over Labor Day weekend. I'm got a piece of 512MB memory, and decided to splurge on an on-sale 40GB hard disk so I can have 2 40s, and dual-boot Red Hat and Winblows.

Awesome sir! Well done!

Heh. I would have sold you the following system:

- Tyan Tiger MP motherboard
- 1GB (4x256) registered Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM
- 2 x AMD Athlon MP 1600+ processors
- 2 x Seagate Cheetah 36GB Ultra 160 SCSI hard drives
- 3Com 3C905TXM 10/100 ethernet card
- Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 sound card
- Adaptec 19160 Ultra 160 SCSI card
- SIIG 5-port USB 2.0 PCI card
- VisionTek Xtasy 6964 GeForce 3 Ti500 video card
- Samsung 16x DVD drive
- LiteOn 48x CD-RW drive
- BayBus 4 fan control knob system
- Enermax EG465P-VE 431-watt power supply
- all wrapped in a super sexy Lian Li PC-61 aluminum case
- (basically this machine, but with upgrades! how do you upgrade such a smokin' machine?)

for <b>way more</b> than you'd want to pay!

Man oh man, it is one sweet Linux machine, though. Whew.

I just sold my machine that I built with the A7N266-VM. Matt's brother needed a machine for Linux and he asked me if I had any spares. I just wasn't really using it, so I let it go. Man. I had an attachment to that machine though. :)

It's a great motherboard, you'll like it.

I'm looking forward to it... in reading customer reviews at Newegg, the only real complaint seemed to be compatibility with Winblows 98. But I looked at the manual on the Asus web site and they seem pretty explicit about what drivers you have to install where if you go with 98, so we'll see how it goes. I'm not running anything at all that requires 2000 or XP, so I'd rather not toss in another $110 for an upgrade if I don't have to.

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh
 

Well, I got the stuff. But no dice. Everything went together apparently with no problems. It was tricky to get the heat sink attached, but a little patience and I prevailed. (The last time I did this was with a Pentium 4; it snapped on much more easily.) So by this morning after breakfast I had the case assembled with motherboard, CPU, RAM, virgin 40GB Maxtor hard drive, CD-RW, 512MB PNY RAM.

No dice, though. To all accounts everything worked fine--it POSTs fine, will boot up to floppy or CD-ROM, etc. But it crashes out halfway thru installation of Winblows 98. Or sooner--I tried several times. The plan is for Red Hat to go on the second hard drive (not yet installed--still in the old computer with all our docs & apps till the new unit is working). So, I threw in the Red Hat 9 install CD, and it choked about halfway through the first CD worth of packages. The error was something like "The X server is no longer available, I'm not sure why".

So. Seems to me that barring a spectacularly weird problem with the hard drive that's not found by scandisk, it's the motherboard or the memory. I'm gonna try to pick up another piec of memory tonight & test it. Any other suggestions? Any good way to really test memory besides just throwing it in and seeing if it crashes? (I checked download.com for burn-in tests, but the ones that looked useful in terms of their features required Windows. :rolleyes: )