Hi I post this msg for two thing: for thanking the answers and leaving it in the archives for others. I had a problem with the d-link net adpater (pcmcia) on my notebook, i was a potato r2. The solution was to install the kernel 2.2.18, which comes with a pcmcia-modules version that corrects problems for the driver I needed. Well, once the net adapter works, the rest of the update is quite easy.
PS: I've been using linux for a couple of years, and somewhat got sick of the updating methods of suse and RH (RH is somewhat cool with RHN, but is pay service), and this ease of administration really pays learing distr-specific things.