Tom wrote: > don't be put off by some of the answers here Dave, centos is primarily > for servers but I use it on all my desktop machines besides my > servers. you can pretty much add any application to your system that > was intended for RH9 upwards including fedora without too much problem > and dag covers most of the good stuff. what you cant find in dags repo > get from rpmfind.net...I use webmin for that. > CentOS is perfectly fine for desktop/workstation use. However, if you're new to Linux (like Dave) and you want to use unsupported tools/components, you're going to have to dig under the covers and customize things. If you don't know much about Linux internals, that could turn out to be a supreme pain in the behind. My suggestion is to "use what works" until you're comfortable with the inner workings of the system. THEN you can experiment when you have some of the skills necessary to get out of trouble if you break things. Switching to Fedora Core (whatever's current this week), Gentoo or Ubuntu or whatever, might improve things somewhat. I suspect a Linux "virgin" is going to have just as many issues with those if they try to get off the beaten track of supported packages. A good analogy is someone who is disappointed with their new car because they can't change the camshafts or pistons by themself to make more power without spending a lot of money on an expert or by repeatedly breaking things and taking a lot of time to learn to do it themselves. Better to just drive the car until you can learn more about how its engine works. Cheers,