I run quite a few different machines at home (as a squirrel I grab anything people are chucking out). I started with a number of SunSparcs running SunOS, and later Solaris, but I found they worked better when I put Linux on them.

Then I got a PC that was getting very tired running Windows 3.31. It perked up no end when I put RedHat Linux on it.

When I got a few Windows 98 machines, I installed Mandrake on them, originally 8.1 and then later releases up to 10.2. Since their reincarnation as Mandriva I've been less impressed, but it still installs out of the box by just selecting the defaults throughout.

I network my Unix boxes using NFS and my one remaining Windows machine using SMB. I have no problem reading and writing documents in all the Micro$oft formats, and can even write Adobe documents.

Until I got 8Mb ADSL I used to buy CDs from the Linux Emporium. It cost me £6 for the latest version of Mandriva. Now I just download the ISOs and burn them onto CD.

John