What happened while I was asleep?

[Robert N. Eaton]

Over the past two or three months, I have had trouble with my computer. 
At first it just acted flaky with the internet, then I had trouble 
booting Linux, then WinXP wouldn't boot either.

It turned out that the boot sector of hda got trashed. Changed 
harddrives, reloaded WinXP, tried to re-install Xandros (the distro I 
had been using for the last couple of years) no luck; tried to install 
Fedora Core 6 (which I had painstakingly downloaded, did all the file 
checks, and burned to six CD's in WinXP) again no luck. It congratulated 
me on a successful installation, and told me that it was creating a Grub 
file, and that was the last I ever saw of it. When I re-booted we went 
directly to WinXP, did not pass go and _really_ didn't collect two 
hundred dollars.

Not to be discouraged, I installed a copy of Kubuntu.  It installed, but 
I couldn't make it access the internet very well. I downloaded an 
updated version of Kubuntu, installed it. Still problems with the net 
and no access to my AOL email service.

A little discouraged, I said to heck with Kubuntu and bought a copy of 
Fedora 7 from Cheap Bytes. It installed flawlessly, and even better, 
allowed me to choose between Fedora 7 and WinXP.

HOWEVER, Fedora 7 acts like just like the two Kubuntus as far as the 
internet access is concerned.  Firefox (the default browser) is 
crippled. It willingly connects to www.userfriendly.org, but not to 
www.google.com.

There are several default lists of web sites available in Firefox. It 
could access _some_ RedHat, Fedora.org, and some on other drop down 
lists, but _not all_. I could discern no pattern to its likes and 
dislikes. In the past ten years, I have NEVER had this much trouble 
connection to the internet, nor to my email account. Yes, I moved from 
one apartment to another, and changed providers from cox.net to Qworst, 
but Xandros handled the changes with aplomb.  It worked perfectly for 
months until hda started gagging.

Now plenty discouraged. What the Hell happened to Linux while I was asleep?

Bob Eaton