First off, thanks for all the responses, they are VERY helpful. Slackware... Despite my Subgenius leanings I don't think I'm ready to jump in there. Looking around on my own I had considered Red Hat, SuSE and Mandrake, and I think I need to check further into each of them. I may try more than one. Re the machine - I called General Nanosystems and talked to one of their techies who was very helpful on the hardware compatibility issue. As far as I can tell, provided I go with a hardware modem (he recommended US Robotics) and not a winmodem I should be okay with installing Linux on a system they build for me. (My last two PCs were from General Nanosystems and I like them a lot.) I intend to call Tran Micro also and see what they have to say. Building my own... That's a stretch, but I haven't ruled it out. Btw - part of the reason I am checking out Linux, aside from complete disgust with Microsoft, is a sense that Linux home and office pc systems are ready to break out of their 'just for geeks' reputation and go mainstream. (We can partly thank Microsoft's licensing for that.) I want to see if I'm right. Thanks again for the help. I'll be posting more as questions come up. Cheers, Charlie Obert _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list