Linux to do the configuration myself, so that issue does not obtain.

     Admittedly, this is more difficult than tossing in a different distro and
     seeing if it works - but it carries the near certainty that if something
     can  be  made  to work, and I take the time to do so, it will work,
     regardless of the distro. In my experience with multiple distros, Debian
     is one of the more easily configurable ones (the only "tool" required
     being a text editor), and so I use, and will be using, Debian and possibly
     its derivatives (e.g., Knoppix or Morphix) for this testing.

     You may be assured that if I can make Debian work on a given laptop, then
     any other distro can also be convinced to do so. It may take more or less
     work, but it's doable. On the other hand, if I'm unable to make it work,
     that fact will not be conclusive. :)

   (?) to mess with the /etc/fstab file a bit to get my 80GB USB hard drive
   working properly, but overall Xandros works well on this machine. 

   I guess the point of my email here is, sometimes it's just as important to
   find the right distro as it is the right hardware. I recently tried to
   install Linux on a friends new laptop. I went through about 10 different
   distros (including Fedora Core 2, Ubuntu, and even tested with Knoppix,
   which  is Debian based and with great hardware detection!). Everything
   failed! ... ie: no mouse, it crashed the X server, etc. Finally I tried
   [105]SuSE 9.1 and it just worked. Yes, I had to install the Nvidia drivers,
   and I never did manage to get his built-in wireless to work! 

     (!)  [Ben]  That can be a valid strategy if you don't have a lot of
     expertise to rely on, and it's nice that it's available. It is, however,
     not the only strategy, nor is it one that I prefer.

   (?) (sometime it seems the hardware manufactures engineer "anti-Linux" into
   their products!) 

     (!) [Ben] As much as a frustrating experience with hardware can make you
     lean in the direction of that belief, I have to believe that it's false at
     its core. PC OEMs are in the business of selling hardware; I can't think
     of an argument convincing enough to make them purposely chase customers
     away.

   (?) Yes, I agree with you. However, the vast majority of users do not know
   how  to recompile a kernel, nor do they want to know. I would say that
   people like you account for a very small percentage of computer users. Most
   of my friends think I am some kind of computer wizard, but in reality, I am
   nowhere near that. Everything is relative, isn't it? I am probably in the
   top  10% of computer users from a knowledge point of view, and you are
   likely in the top 1%. 

     (!) [Ben] I'm afraid you missed the point I was trying to make, Rick - I
     guess I didn't state it clearly enough. In essence, if I can get a laptop
     working well under Linux, whatever the distro, then it's at least possible
     and in fact not too difficult - you may have noticed in the article that
     I'll simply stop trying once it's consumed a certain amount of time (a few
     hours at most.) If I can't do it at all (as was the case with the HP 5000
     I'd picked up from Staples), then it gets blackballed. In both cases, a
     report of the experience becomes useful and doable, whereas testing every
     laptop against a dozen distros is out of the realm of possibility.

   (?) As for the comment about hardware manufacturers purposely engineering
   anti-Linux products, I was just being facetious. 

     (!) [Ben] I understood that, but wanted to use your comment to clarify my
     view of the situation; I've heard a lot of people grumbling about it as if
     they believed it.

     (?) As for aviation, well I am only 43, but I took up flying when I was
     16. I am not currently flying, as things got all f&*^%$d up for me after
     9/11. It's a rather long story.

     (!) [Ben] Yeah. I've heard of a number of pilots who were affected... and
     you've   probably   heard   about   the  recent  TSA  alien  flight
     training/citizenship verification rule. That's going to shaft a LOT of
     pilots - and the damned thing is as confusing as can be imagined, and a
     couple of miles beyond that. AOPA is fighting the good fight, but there's
     a lot of fear in the air - and about it.
            ____________________________________________________

(?) Linux boots from RAMdisk,

   From keesan 

                          Answered By: Kapil Hari Paranjape, Thomas Adam 

   I  tried  telling  CMOS that there was no second drive because someone
   suggested that method to get linux to recognize a larger drive, but my
   drive is 3GB. I have DOS on a master drive and two linux partitions on the
   slave drive, with one linux in each, and RAMdisk and loop versions in DOS
   partitions. 

   I am able to mount the linux partitions when running from the RAMdisk or
   loop versions and then switch to run linux on them: 

   mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt 

   chroot /mnt 

   This puts hdb1 on / and I can then use linux on the ext2 partition. 

     (!) [Kapil] But this is essentially what most initrd-based start up
     procedures do anyway! So, though I haven't used BasixLinux, I would guess