David > I don't understand what seems to be your unwillingness to use the Debian unofficial CDs with non-free firmware, but your willingness to use Ubuntu which is full of non-free firmware and everything else.
Stewart -- Meh...that's just because you don't know I'm an apolitical centrist. Ian Murdock deserves a posthumous ACM Turing award--IMHO. I have been using Linux since Linus Torvalds put it up on the Internet and we had to make our own floppy boot disk. The real problem is the non-free graphics chip, which I would clip out with diagonal pliers if I could see the damn traces.
This recurring situation keeps reminding me of that old Soundgarden song that came out around the same time as Linux 0.2, "The Day I Tried to Live." Yesterday I helped the blind, nominated Linus Torvalds for the Nobel Peace prize with my first kernel patch, and saved an old PC from the e-waste scrap heap. Today, I learn that I am a liar!
No way I'm gonna believe that. Ubuntu has its impairments, but trust me, so do I. I don't have time to fight.