I the last two days I've made a little progress. I read tons of Linux documentation and then installed Red Hat in a dual boot configuartation with XP (debian can wait for my next impulsive urge to do something crazy). I spent a few hours getting use to it, configuring the trivial little things, installing things I needed, etc. Have used Unix and Solaris before, I now feel reasonable comfortable with it. I set up some makefiles and compiled some of my old code to see how everything works-- no big surprises. The next major goals are: figure out how to compile my own kernel, then install the arm toolchain and see if I can get my own empeg kernel working. I'll let ya'll know how it goes...

John