bsharitt's Journal: Finally a new Computer

I finally got my new computer. Initially I was going to get one of those VIA 800 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 10 GB HD, no flopp of modem Lindows computers from Wal-Mart.com, but I found a Athlon 1700+, 128 MB RAM, 20 GB HD, with floppy and modem PC on Pricewatch for only $40 more, so I got it. I've got XP on it now, and I'm trying to decide what Linux I want on it. None of them work out of the box with my sound card, except Knoppix, but I can't very well run it off a CD all the time. Slackware used to be my favorite, but now it seems more clumsy and it only has Gnome 1.4 right now. I tried Lycoris out of curiosity, and I liked it, but it felt way to much like Windows. If I knew someone who was migrating from Windows to Linux I would definatly recomend this first. I'll probably go with Red Hat 8.0.With Gnome 2 and blucurve, it is probably the best looking Linux(or Windows for that matter) desktop I've seen. Sure it's not Mac OS X, but I guess it'll have to do. There is one fatal flaw in my new computer, the networking just doesn't work. I've installed drivers and tried it in Windows XP and 2000, and in the four versions of Linux I mentioned above. Windows recognizes that there is a network card and that it's connected to a cable, but that's it. I had a friend connect his laptop to the same cable, that goes to the same network jack, and his worked flawlessly. My first thought was that the onboard ethernet adapter but be bad. Since I would have pay for shipping to get a warrenty repair, I decided to go to Wal-Mart and get a new network card since it would be cheaper. I got a basic Linksys network card and installed it. Oddly it behaved exatly the same way as the old one. Now I am completely stumped. I could get another card to see if my some weird coiensidence I got a bad card with the exact same problem, but I doubt that. If anybody has any ideas please tell me.