So I trashed the file system on my laptop last night and am writing this from my backup workstation.
I did this under the mistaken impression that I was going to be installing netbsd over the network. which might have worked if EITHER of the pcmcia ethernet cards I have worked. One of them would be found, assert a MAC address and then send mangled packets off into the ethernet and utter messages like NIC memory corrupted and claim that all it's packets were stolen by some bullies at the router. The other one would be seen plugging into the cardbus only to vanish from the sight of the operating system which would say: Where did the card go? (the MIA card IBM creditcard ethernet worked fine under linux, the other one (linksys) worked after a modules upgrade) Moral of the story. Beware pcmcia ethernet cards when installing netbsd. So in order to return the laptop to a functional state I'm looking for an OS, right now the leading contenders are in order. 1. FreeBSD - Pros: wide support, likely to deal well with minority pcmcia cards and such. Cons: safe and solid and boring 2. OpenBSD - pros: fanatical support locally, secure, strong crypto, cons: smaller developer/user community, PCMCIA support unkown 3. Linux from Scratch: pros: would be kind of fun and educational. cons: How much edification do I want, really? 4. Slackware: Pros: slighlty saner than option 3. cons: Neal would lord it over me for weeks at time. 5. debian-testing: Pros: I'm already somewhat familiar with the debian internals. Cons: could be too close to my comfort zone AnyHoo, I'm confused and seeking input, if you have a suggestion as to Operating Systems that's not on the list, my only criteria are: Must be open source, should run python, Must be able to connect to the network via the PCMCIA bus. Should allow me to learn about itself relatively quickly and easily. http://www.efn.org/~laprice ( Community, Cooperation, Consensus http://www.opn.org ( Openness to serendipity, make mistakes http://www.efn.org/~laprice/poems ( but learn from them.(carpe fructus ludi) http://allie.office.efn.org/phpwiki/index.php?OregonPublicNetworking
