I’m finally succumbing…

… to the evils of Linux.
I just spent a long few hours in reading up on differences, advantages and disadvantages to the systems available.
I also scoped out some articles on DesktopLinux.com where there’s an in-depth review of a Debian-based distribution called “SimplyMEPIS“. From what I’ve read, it seems to be somewhat decent.

I’m willing to sacrifice my good ol’ Toshiba Satellite 4030CDT to the cause.
This laptop has gone through some serious trouble over time. Let’s see….
It’s been lugged around the world, clocking over 600km travel distance a month. Sometimes even more, if overseas was involved. It accompanied me during the Air Force, and actually assisted in doing tons of dictation recording and helped me put a few Warrant Officers through business school (made MY life a whole lot easier).
The screen hinges died at some point. Local service wanted a few hundred sheqs to replace them. I ordered replacements on the web for 12 bucks. While I was at it, I also ordered a new power supply, after the old one melted during a good StarCraft Lan party game with and another friend, way back when.
I also replaced the dinky 4.3GB drive with a whopping 30GB, added another 64MB ram to total 128MB, and replaced the CD-Rom drive, when it funkified, as well as the battery, which is no longer that great anymore. I also swapped out the keyboard once, when it had died and gone to a better place.
I’ll be the first to say that it may not be a spectacular laptop, but it’s been a damn good mule, and a good sport to boot about all this.

So, anyways, I figure if I install SimplyMEPIS on it, and then toss XPde on top of it, I should be OK for a while. While I’m at it, I’ll probably use a prog sent me to, called “Synergy” which allows for some cool computer interfacing.
If anyone has any comments/advice/ideas/whatever, let me know.
Long live the free software! (not necessarily Open source! 😉 )