Well, I have quite a bit of experience in this area. I started out with Mandrake Linux 7.X when it was already getting old and that was one of my first times using / installing Linux. My first Linux install was the version of Open Linux SCO had (Cringing) and then I went to Free BSD for a while. I started using SUSE with 8.1 Professional. To be honest and not just because I'm a SUSE person, SUSE 8.1 was WAY better. I don't want you to think I'm trying to say you shouldn't use anything else, because the more distros you try, the better SUSE looks anyway ;) But after using more than 80 OSs (Different typed of Unix and Linux, DOS, Windows of all types, and BeOS and little known OSs) I always leave room in my network for a couple SUSE boxes. Mandrake can be fun to work with especially when you're new to Linux because it holds your hand a lot. But SUSE is in my opinion, much better, more structered, and of course, YAST2 can kick MCC's ass. I'd say if you have another box or a spare partition on your machine, yea man, go for it, testing out new OSs is fun. Ummm, I'm not quite sure if the newest distro is free anymore, they just changed their name to Mandriva recently (Mandrake bought Connectiva) I mean I can't say for sure but check it out. One thing I like in Mandrake over SUSE, is in Mandrake Linux, even older copies, when you open Emacs, it's got this awesome lookin theme for Emacs which is a green colored BG, and the text and things look cool. Lol, that's the only thing I like about Mandrake over other distros is it's emacs theme thingy. (Hey, little things like this count, if they didn't Mac OS X wouldn't sell anything close to Free BSD right? ) Anyway, if you do decide to give it a shot, I'd recommend you go online and buy a Mandrake Book. I don't think you'd have to buy a CD-Set, so you can save your money for the next SUSe version, but just a book to help you out with the few things Mandrake does. The Online update has been fixed a little better for sure. 9.X was crap with updates. The FTP servers, half of them wouldn't work and you couldn't close it, and.... Well you could fix it up a bit but it was annoying to use all around. My favorite Linux things: SUSE Slackware Libranet Mandrake's Emacs look Trustix Vector Mainly SUSE and Slackware, it's the only thing I've got installed right now, I have two or three SUSE boxes here and a Slackware machine I'm on now. Not to drag this off topic but if anyone knows how to make emacs look like it does in Mandrake, could you reply to me? Maybe off list to keep this from going off topic? I don't use Emacs all that much as I'm a Vi guy, but I'm learning it. -Allen / Das Blut / Gore.