Category talk:390

Hello -- have a TP390e dual booting Slackware Linux and W2K. Have just installed the Slackware on a 20gb partition, am working out some issues like how to get the mp3s to play (right now they sound real scratchy and broken) and getting a driver to make the winmodem work with Linux. Slackware runs great on the laptop and is speedy (faster than Windows).

Productivity lags a bit because in spite of getting the Slackware book, getting some of the GUI stuff going is seemingly less of a priority for the Slackware folks. As you'd expect, the install has been rock solid with no glitches or crashes. It came with a full suite of apps, of which AbiWord is a favorite -- real quick and capable wp app. So far I've used only the K- desktop and apps but plenty of other window managers are installed and I look forward to experimenting with them. As soon as I get the modem working I look forward to getting on the internet. Everything is so fast and solid that I feel I made a good move with the Slackware, although I had used Red Hat 8 before they went to the new commercial format, on another machine, and liked it too. Slackware takes a little more direct involvement but the more I work with it the better I like the culture behind it.

Would like to hear about others' experiences and how they tackled the modem issue and got their mp3s working, and any other issues they encountered and conquered. In my limited experience with Linux on this laptop, I can see Slackware giving me several more useful years on this machine. Have upgraded the drive and other stuff that you'd expect to wear out, but Windows was running today's apps a little too slow for me, and I see Linux addressing that nicely.

By the way, the machine is a 200Mhz PII with 40GB HDD and 256 MB RAM. It ran Win98 in fairly crappy fashion, so W2K was a breath of fresh air, but still slow. I like the Slackware install for the speed and potentially greater security.