to Mandrake Linux! It's the mutts nuts. FreeS/WAN, Gnome 2, it's got everything! Best of all, it's European. Yes, I know about SuSE, but I have to try and be different.

I cut the CD's of the 9.0 Beta1 in a fit of anticipated ADSL deprivation just for testing under VMware. Now I've had to install it as, after dicking up some Debian kernels, I've found my Debian CD's are corrupted beyond repair.

(Keep this quiet from the Mandrake peeps, or they'll make me feel guilty for not filing bug reports). They're on Beta4 now. When the release candidate comes out I'll cut some CD's remotely and get them sent out. As a paid up member I'll allow myself two downloads a year. The two problems I can see with this, though, are that tech support being what it is in Hammersmith is going to take about three days to locate and change a blank CD, and anything going through the post here that looks as if it might be of value goes missing.

No more mucking with kernels for me, no siree.

You can even install a wireless card without compiling a custom kernel, though I haven't done this yet.

Sorry about all this geek stuff, more photos soon. Or maybe not - I paid good money for a copy of Macromedia's Fireworks some years back and now I want to use it on this pc but the timed out trial version only gives me the option to Buy Now or Exit and there wasn't anywhere to put the reg'n number in. The support email address they give me doesn't even exist any more. Ferkin shite. Probably I'll have to go and buy another copy of some software I've already paid for, the registration number of which went with the XP installation. We'll see - I've just written to customer support.