Folks,

Thanks much for the recommendations on a Linux distro to bring my
dual-processor Intel system "up from Windows". I have always suspected that
Windows NT was not making full use of the two processors.

I ended up installing SuSE 8.0, if for no other reason that stores carry it
all over town, next to Red Hat, while nobody has Debian. There must be a
reason why the market is demanding it. The Pro edition comes with six discs
of applications. The last time I installed a Linux was Red Hat 6.1 several
years ago on an old 486. I ran that machine purely as a firewall in my
three-PC office. It served me well, but was destroyed in a flood last year.
Only now am I dedicating a new machine to Linux once again.

SuSE installed with far less trouble than the old RH had done. The interface
looked as professional as a Windows install. The autoprobe found every
component on my system except for the serial mouse. Midway through the
install, there was a point where SuSE displays the autoprobe results and
allowed me to specify the mouse as being on the first serial port (using
keyboard only, of course). It set up X as the default interface, and had no
trouble configuring the AGP video. X looks really good now; this time, I'm
not going to automatically ditch it in favor of the command line.

Alan Gore