Re: Why do I bother?

[Shane]

Hello, again.   Thank you to the people who tried to help.  I realize and did when I wrote, that I furnished litle data.  What I gave you was what the system gave me.  I have managed to get X back up so that I can respond, or in most cases ignore.   I did not disparage Debian, in fact if I didn't like it, I wouldn't use it.   I have installed it years ago on a desktop machine and lost it when the drive died.  Complications have prevented me from trying it until recently.  I have not posred exact scripts of error messages because I can not yet connect using Debian.  I have been a professional programmer - FORTRAN, COBOL, a few different forms of Basic,  Algol, three different assemblers and one machine language - so playing with computer apps until they work is not new to me.   However, when I run pppconfig and it sets up files that I have to change, most notably so far the /etc/ppp/peers/provider file, to make it fail less badly, I think there3 is something very wrong.   I have also been sent to files that did not exist.  The path was broken and find could not find them.   None of the solutions I found in the books I have or the books from the library worked.  Remember that I could not access the web - one of the reasons that I have not responded until now.  I finally to got the XP re-install to work by doing some tricks with cfdisk.   These are not the only operating systems I've ever had to fool with.  MASTER on a Control Data 6600 comes to mind.   Will I succeed?  Yes.  The better the help I get the sooner I will succeed.  The more emotional responses I get - you call them flames, I call them flame-outs because they leave me cold - the more I will ignore.   3.1 should be here soon.  Failing that the compiler works.  One way or another I will get it running.       Thanks again to all who offered assistance.   Shane