It has been a long process getting a flavor of OSS to run as a desktop on the "new" laptop. Since nearbout anything would run just fine on my old "old" IBM 600e laptop and my old "not quite so old" IBM desktop, I pretty much assumed that most anything would at least run on a somewhat newer model. Boy was I surprised.

I have manages to install the following distros on my IBM x23, in no particular order:

• SuSe (crashed)
• Ubuntu (crashed)
• Mandriva (ran slower than the others, so it wasn't on long enough to crash)
• Kubuntu (crashed)
• Redhat Fedora Core 5 (seems stable enough, but what do I do with it?)
• PCBSD (what I have now)(also fairly slow)

There may be some more that I have forgotten.

When I say crash, I mean there is an error message that some file or another is missing or corrupted, and I am given a command prompt to fix it. Usually the OS will load after a reboot or two, but not consistantly.

When I first began to contemplate choosing a distro, I wanted KDE, the ability to install and run Apache, and I really wanted out of the box recognition of my integrated wireless card. I did get internal wireless recognition from:

• Ubuntu
• Kubuntu

So close, and yet so far away.

Windows XP Pro loads consistantly, no internal wireless without a firmware update, but it does run all the magnifigreat programs that I find as natural as breathing, such as PocoMail and NoteTabPro. I bet it even runs Photoshop. Or Civilization II.

Sometimes I feel like a total and complete numbskull for putting myself through such torture when every computational function I ever dreamed of is right at my fingertips. The downside is that that everything I read speaks of virii, rootkits, WGA, and general ownership of things I would like to consider to be my own property. It has come down to ease of use versus moral ground, and doggone it if old habits ain't hard to break.