Debian is not as hard as it used to be.

My first recent exposure to it, and the Sarge Installer, was just on a very stubborn, weird machine. Laptops/Notebooks/Whatever you want to call them are quirky by their very nature. The machine on which I did my most recent install, however, is a generic white-box PIII computer with an Intel motherboard and i815 Coppermine-rated chipset. Everything didn't work right out of the box, but after I finished an epic update (700+ packages...goddamn!) it all fell into place on the next reboot. (Yes, sometimes you do have to do a reboot when updating, especially when you need to replace the kernel!)

Now all I have to do is move the info from the ThinkPad to the Desktop (actually copy, not move...I like having a redundant copy on my faithful lappie) and I'm good to go with this machine.

Really...Debian's no longer the distro for the more macho than thou geek. That distinction now is held by Gentoo. And Synaptic is just the kewlest little program for discovering all the neat packages available from Debian...it gives you capsule descriptions of each package when you highlight them. Just like the Mandrake installer.

I did have a few little teething problems with this, and had to ask my geeky buddy Chad some advice on a few things, but once that was out of the way, it was smooth sailing.

Now if only I didn't fuxor sound on my ThinkPad from a hasty update...bleah! :P