In a similiar vein, I loaded Mandrake 7.1 onto my AMD K6 powered system. I'm usually using KDE and haven't attempted Gnome. I am, however, having problems getting onto the net via modem. I get the dreaded 'pppd daemon failed unexpectedly' error when I bring up kppp. I tried to switch to Gnomeppp but after entering the login/phone/etc, it didn't save it! I did get it saved at one point, but have no idea how it happened! BTW, I downloaded the latest ppp RPM from the Mandrake site and I at least was able to get the error eliminated. But know Netscape (4.73) will not connect. Any ideas? I'm using an Aceex DM-56V14 that has a hardware controller. And one more thing while I'm at it ... I've a (company) Dell Latitude laptop that has the same Mandrake load. When I start KDE, I get an error that .Xauthority cannot be written. I ctl-c and KDE launches ok. I tried changing permissions to that of my main machine but it really hangs then and I wait for it to time-out. I really like Linux, yes I do! pete (or the German version, peter):)