First of all, a thanks to all those who offered suggestions. It's comforting to know that dumb but sincere questions are given respect and sensible responses.
Now for John Richard Smith, please note that out of great appreciation for your on-target advice, I have personally spoken to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. They have asked that you convey to Lord North, General Howe and especially His Majesty King George that we regret the recent unpleasantness. I for one concur on the condition that I be granted on one dinner date with Fergie. John, you were right as to the issue being related to memory. After I partitioned the drive to your specs (using the M8 partitioner in Reccomended mode) I did a graphic install of M8 on "/". I only installed 338K, that is, hardly anything more than KDE's required 295K. Yes, the sys still crashed after the penguin smear. But I was able to reboot through the BootLoader. At the auto-login prompt I kept my pudgies to myself and after a pause of about 7 to10 seconds, the sys booted into the First Time screen. I looked around and then got brave. I could not figure how to add the other available software (a word processor, spreadsheet, PDF reader, graphics manipulators, etc.) so I shut down and went back to the M8 installer again and did a re-install. This time I selected the items I wanted. They totaled about 700K. Of course, that install failed, and did so in the same manner as the previously frustrating problems - crashing as soon as I configured the modem connnefcion - and displaying that "missing memory" message. That confirmed to me that the size of the installation was the issue that cause the previous installs of a similar size to fail even though the dialogs indicated there is plenty of space beyond that So I went back and did yet another install. I repeated the one that worked, (KDE only) and it went fine. Then I recalled an earlier posting about the Software Manager - and I learned how to use that. I installed most of the items I wanted. And the sys slowed down a bit and did one or two strange things but is appear pretty stable. I say "pretty stable" because I did have one total hang while I was fooling with the desktop configuration. Had to throw the switch to get out but after rebooting, have had no problems. Except a weird one. While I was doing that desktop configuration, the screen display of my monitor changed. The "picture" shrank on this 19" monitor, leaving me about an inch and a half black border on top, bottom and left sides. The display was shifted to the right edge. But when I looked at WIN XP, the display was normal. So I went back to M8. I used the monitor's front panel digital controls to resize the horizontal and vertical display and re-center it. After that I increased the default font size to one more comfortable for these 70 year old eyes. The Mandrake display is now perfect. And the WIN XP display remains exactly the same as I have always had it. Wouldn't you think that the monitor front panel controls would affect both OSs in the same manner? Apparently, something is telling the monitor to remember the correct settings for each OS. I am still using WIN at the moment and will do so until I finish configuring the M8 email client and learn to use it. But I like what I've seen of M8 so far. The range of choices and tweaks is amazing. It's like having a brand new computer. By the way, John. If the deal to get a date with Fergie needs a sweetener, can we talk about sending you back Liz Taylor. Regards and many thanks, Joe Harkins
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