Thanks, Eillen. I do have Gnome on the debian CD. I'll get round to checking it out soon. I originally set up the desktop with KDE instead (which was not included on the debian CD because the debian people consider themselves purists and some tiny component of KDE has a commercial background and its therefore impure) but I'd still like to check out Gnome, and switching back and forth doesn't sound like a problem.
In further news on the progress report, Wooo Hoooo! It's going a lot better now. I've figured out quite a few things and I've been able to download and install a few good packages. The desktop environment is gorgeous and in many aspects really puts Windows to shame. I got my pen tablet working properly in the X window environment, and the freebie graphics programs are surprisingly robust so I'll actually be able to do some of my graphics work in Linux.
I haven't yet come up with an email program that I find suitable. Does anyone have any suggestions? I need an email program that will allow me to send and recieve mail on multiple accounts at once, without having to shut down and start a new instance or anything like that. Finding programs that let me check mail on multiple accounts is not too hard, but they don't let me send mail on multiple accounts. I also need a mail programs with fairly sophisticated filtering options. And I despise command-line mail. I've only ever come up with 2 windows mail clients that have good enough features... Pegasus mail and the most recent version of MS Outlook. I was hoping Pegaus would have a Linux version, but they don't... instead that have a page devoted to explaining why they don't have a Linux version which amounts to "we don't know how to port it to Linux and we won't release the source". Too bad. That's an excellent mail program. So if anyone has suggestions they would be most welcome.
But overall, I'm really liking Linux a lot, and if I can just get a few more things set the way I want them, I may be a true convert.
Phoenix
