Hi Folks! In the past, problems with modems plagued my attempts to use Linux. But BEOS worked nicely (<1 hour needed from installation to getting online), until javascript was encountered. Their web browser sucks. // Could you recommend a KISS distribution without the bells and whistles and too many GB in size? Or should i install selectively and not buy the source code CDs? Thanks! Chris

Hi Folks! In the past, problems with modems plagued my attempts to use Linux. But BEOS worked nicely (<1 hour needed from installation to getting online), until javascript was encountered. Their web browser sucks. // Could you recommend a KISS distribution without the bells and whistles and too many GB in size? Or should i install selectively and not buy the source code CDs? Thanks! Chris

hi'

well, coming from BEOS you should not be lost with a unix distro

but don't think about install a base and add package by package, you'll find so much dependencies problems that you'll give up ...

or install all libraries and then try to, but it;s unlikely that you would enjoy it ...

if you choose Linux, you can setup the packages selecting an individual choice with what you need only and finish with less than 1gb on the hdd and with all the programs that you may need installed and working

as we all said Linux distro are a lot easier these days, whatever you choose, Suse, Red-Hat, Connectiva or else, you'll find the install easy and quite fast as well.

your problem with modem comes probably from winmodem(internal) that for quite a long time Linux did not provide any support, it belongs to the past and now the network connection setup is an easy thing to do(any distro).

I would like to say also, that if you were with BEOS, why not try Free-BSD the Unix from Berkeley university(origin), it's not as easy as Linux for an install, but rock-solid after and the settings are not so difficult to setup properly.

for an install of a Linux distro, ask anyone here, as we're all running different distro, you'll always find soemone with some hints to give you

for Free-BSD, best is to ask straight to cndvic, he's an expert of it

anyway, if you still have your winmodem working, I suggest that you change for an external one just for a tiny better

francois

ps; my choice would go to a one of the easiest to install "Mandriva" or a "Red-Hat Fedora", I run Suse 9.3

and testing Free-BSD 5.4 these days on another "old"machine

You should try Kanotix or Ubuntu.

hands down SuSe. You can still DL 9.1 personal from http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofes...nt_mirrors.html

it is a single CD. You can also try opensuse.org

As far as the javascript issue, use the browser you have and go to getfirefox.com

Linux still requires a bit of work, but it is more than worth it.

by the way I am writing this on my laptop which has been Linux only since I bought it

some years ago. I really dont use my windows desktop for much anmore and I havent used

I.E. in years.