In message <001b01c2d11b$b4e19500$59951ad3@windows>, "James Buchanan" writes:
>Hi,
>
>Thanks for this Steve.  I ran the NetBSD Live CD and sampled the
>installation/config screens, and it seems reasonable, but lots of
>things fly past and I miss them (keyboard mappings etc) but of course
>I didn't see the disk partitioning bit.  The installer needs serious
>work to correct things flying past off screen with never the chance to
>see them.
>
>My video card works it seems, but 386Live did not want to start KDE
>for some reason.  The grey screen with the X mouse pointer came up,
>mouse moving OK etc, but then it died.  The KDE window didn't start,
>and I got a console instead.

I don't know what 386Live is.  X generally exits if the window manager 
dies; that may be what happened.
>
>I am worried about the modem issue, and maybe I will just get a 56K
>serial modem (hardware modem that works with Linux) since it's likely
>that it will work.  At least then I can use one of my narrowband
>accounts to dialup and get help on the list if I need to.

As far as I know, all external modems work.
>
>I am halfway downloading the second i386 CD in a 7-CD set! :-/  There
>are some nice pre-compiled packages on the 2 CDs for i386 that I will
>have in the next hour.  That gives me emacs, CUPS and so on.  That
>will have to do.  I can't afford a $500 bill to download all those ISO
>CD images :-)

OK...  You can download invididual precompiled packages from the NetBSD 
site, but getting the prerequisites right is often painful...

>
>Thanks for taking the time to respond Steve.  If an AT&T researcher
>can find things a challenge I don't see what hope I've got :-(
>

It's a question of what things I know -- X isn't among them...

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)