Hi list. I'm finally getting set up with a linux system here, after wining about it for 2 or 3 years. It's been fun, but I've got some questions and consearns not dealt with by the instalation documentation I've read. Some are speakup related, others are symply linux related. First of all, I'm having trouble detecting devices here. For example, although my ardic transport is located on com1, I need to issue the command speakup_ser=0 whenever I load into ramdisk, or the thing won't fly. How can I ensure that when I get all this straightened around, my synth will auto detect? Next, I keep losing my partition mounts and cd rom drives. According to the documentation, they should stay put,but they haven't. One possible reason is that my swap is hda2 and my EX2 linux partition is hda1. I'm off to switch that around now. Could there be any other reasons why they don't stick? Finally, I've been through all the packages and so on available on the slackware cd image. Is it worth installing gnome or x-windows? They look nifty, especially gnome, but how speech friendly are they really? Thanks for any help and advice. Erik --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.393 / Virus Database: 223 - Release Date: 30/09/2002