I'm looking for a little advice from the sages on this list. I'm about to buy a new portable computer. From the hardware side I've pretty settled on getting yet another IBM Thinkpad. I've had good enough experience with them for some years now to feel comfortable getting another Thinkpad. This will be my third in a row. IBM has actively begun supporting linux in that they now offer one of their leading Thinkpad models with Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4 preinstalled. So, here's the dilemma--Shall I get the preinstalled linux and then patch with Speakup and tweak for my needs? Or should I just get the hardware I want and go with an install from scratch? I have no experience with Caldera whatsoever. All my working experience on Linux has been with RedHat (plus a few forays into Debian). My desktop system is running RedHat, and I'm keeping that system for the foreseeable future. So, what would you do? And, how would you decide? On the plus side I see two advantages, primarily. First, I think I can assume the unit will be functional out of the box. Or, is that foolhardy? Is it likely to be functional in X, but have many console text features missing? My second reason for going with the preinstalled system is that I want to get vmware running for Windows access in a Linux console. I've never succeeded at getting X working on my own--so have always fallen short of this goal to date. I feel I'm ahead of the game if I get a working X environment out of the box. Is this enough reason to go with the preinstalled Caldera? I very much appreciate any wisdom you would share on this. Thanks in advance to all of you. -- Janina Sajka, Director Information Systems Research & Development American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) janina at afb.net
