[ale] Playing distros on a laptop

[griffisb at bellsouth.net]

Hey, does anyone know if SuSE 9.0 is on the shelfs yet? I've been working on my sister's 
laptop and have it ready to go, but would seriously consider upgrading to 9.0 if it is out and on 
the shelves. 
 
Fun things to date: I installed SuSE 8.2 Personal and had most everything working, but didn't 
have dial-up working yet. I decided since I was just playing with it, to try Mandrake 9.1. The 
install went very well, but minor modem issues. The Xircom Ethernet 10/100 + 56K worked 
with Ethernet fine, but KPPP didn't find the modem. A little research, and I found that the 
modem came up on /dev/ttyS4, so a quick symlink of /dev/ttyS4 to /dev/modem - and dial-up 
was working. Not as pretty as I wanted switching between Ethernet and dial, but okay. Don't 
know if there was a bug issue, or just user ignorance. I tend to be an ignorant user on 
occasion. 
 
Then came installing Knoppix 3.3 09/24/03 onto the harddrive. The installation went well, and 
a quick apt-get update, apt-get upgrade and I was running Debian Testing/Unstable. I installed 
Windows type fonts, but still didn't like the look and feel. I know it's a minor concern, but for a 
person new to Linux - I think Icons and pretty fonts count more than really necessary. 
 
So a quick install of SuSE 8.2 Personal again, this time with more attention paid to both 
Ethernet and dial-up. Dial is working, hooray! Since my sister lives in Ligonier, PA - I checked 
local ISPs. Found Pittsburgh Connect and signed up for a quarterly plan billed to me. Also 
found a Linux guy on tech support! He's been running Slackware on his servers, and Mandrake 
on the desktop. Offered his name and e-mail for direct support. You gotta love that! 
 
So, the laptop is ready to go. SuSE 8.2 Personal is running. Ethernet is working. Dial-up is paid 
for and connects to the ISP fine. E-Mail is configured - both KMail and Ximian Evolution (with a 
brief description of each). News is working (KNode is confgigured and the SuSE mailing list is 
subscribed to). 
 
I wrote a brief introduction to the laptop - powering on, logging in, connecting to the Internet, 
using E-Mail, a quick description of OOo and GNUCash. Now to see if my HPLaserJet 710C is 
still working. It was jamming, so I retired it. Think I'll tinker for an hour before giving up. 
 
I still have to write about the joys of backing up. Luckily the laptop has CD Read/Write, so it 
should be okay. I would have liked to try out Fedora Core before shipping, but Fedora is not at 
1.0 status yet, so that will hold for a while. It's been a fun project. 
 
Guys - if any of you have a "which distro" thing going on, even though I consider myself a 
newbie - I can only say try as many distros as you have the time and inclination to download, 
burn to CD and install. It sure was fun having something "clean" to work with. (hmmmm, can I 
get Red Hat or Fedora installed and tested before a final decision? Think I better just visit a Pak 
'N Mail and move on to other projects).