NEVER SAY NEVER

The latest in this Zareason machine's saga has brought me to
Fedora 12.  Fedora, running GNOME.  Yeah, yeah, I'm a shameless
hypocrite.  But don't worry, I'm not loving it.  So far, it's
been about a week, and I've tried compiling, maybe, eight or
nine applications in Fedora, and nothing has worked.  Not one.
Also, I can't watch DVDs on this thing, despite enabling the
supposedly-required non-Free repos, and installing dvdcss and
all that -- stuff I was always able to successfully accomplish
on Debian.  But there's no joy in Red Hatville: mighty Fedora
has struck out.

So all this then begs the question: "What next'?  Well, I've
been thinking about Slackware a lot lately.  I know exactly zero
about it, but the things I've heard make it sound like a steep
learning curve.  I'm not opposed to that, necessarily, but I
need to have a productive machine immediately.  In fact, when
you go to that, the best of all worlds here is something I can
use right away to get my stuff done, but which can be expanded
upon (read that, I can compile software for successfully).

That might be a tall order, perhaps.  I'm still on the search.
And, for that matter, I'd really like to take advantage of the
graphics available to this hardware.  That would involve the use
of non-Free drivers, but I'm not so squeamish as to run from
added usability.

I dunno.  Right now, I'm simply drifting -- but not in a good
way.  It's one thing to distro-hop out of curiosity. Quite