Prior to today, I had been doing some research. I had some previous Red Hat 8.0 CDs lying around from a previous failed attempt (which failed due to hardware issues, not Linux), and I had planned to use them. I had been reading a Red Hat newsgroup, and found that they were no longer giving away their stable, business-class flavor of Linux; instead, they had forked the project and started the Fedora Project. Folks were suggesting that people who wanted the stability, et. al. of Red Hat should take a look at White Box Enterprise Linux (WBEL).

The decision to acquire a new computer for me began this adventure. Before leaving to pick it up, I started the download of the three CD images for WBEL. Once I got home, I cannibalized some parts off it to repair an old machine I had here, and got that machine set up on WXP Pro for my kids. Then, I began the install. It went flawlessly - it recognized every piece of hardware I had. I then scooted it around so I could plug it into our router, configured the network (a breeze), and it worked. I'm looking forward to more playing tomorrow!