"John Heim" writes: > Probably the only thing to consider is that debian Actually, that is good for me. I have used Redhat on some systems because that was what was there and I don't have any problems with it except Debian is what I have on all the desktops I use at work and at home. The only real difference for the laptop is that I don't have a true serial port there. There is a dialup modem in there and I probably need to leave that alone to have that capability if necessary. The laptop does have an Ethernet port, USB port and CDROM drive so it is pretty nice. Since it is 5 years old, it doesn't have a wireless adapter but I wouldn't need that nearly as much as I need the Ethernet port. Kermit is an excellent program for serial port access. on the system I have at work, I use one serial port to go to an old DOS P.C. equipped with kermit and an Echo speech box and then I use C-kermit on the Linux box to make use of its second serial port to talk to any other boxes I am working on at the time that aren't ready for the network yet. I hope on the laptop that I can get the whole works including speech on there so the only extra hardware to lug around would be the USB to serial converter. On desktops, I have had good luck with an 8-port RS-232 box and the correct drivers on the USB side so I trust that technology. The only problem is that the Linux box needs to be fully up to get the serial port. I may give oralux a try to see how well it likes the different hardware one runs in to on a laptop. _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list