Welcome back to my system memory. Yes folks, I'm back on Linux. For real this time. I'm actually going to go to the effort to make everything work that I typically use, and I think things have come to be mature enough and my hardware is old enough that this won't be all too painful. So... I wiped out my old Kubuntu install and started over fresh, just in time for them to release a new version... but I managed to successfully upgrade to the new version (despite many folks reporting problems with that process). So far, I have Firefox with all my bookmarks, i have my music and video player installed, and all of my drives are mounted (samba, fat32 & ntfs) - so I can get to my stuff. I'm still working on the kernel compile, as Ubuntu apparently doesn't feel that it's necessary to provide a SMP based kernel anymore (shame shame!). I've compiled two that didn't work, so hopefully this one works. I still need to get gimp and a few other essentials... but really, my desktop computer doesn't get used for *all* that much these day. Having the trusty laptop nearby will make the transition a bit easier.