Finally getting into Linux again, on a new box with 256meg RAM and a UDMA HDD (big improvement) and going through SuSE 7.0 Professional packages. There are about 50 different packages that pertain to scientific instrumentation and data analysis. Many, many more are very useful for data presentation, including an IBM "open visualization" package (dx). Even more packages for programming; visual TCL looks perfect, but Delphi compatible Pascal looks perfect, too. The package "SampLin" seems to be a very serious starting point with serial port and GPIB interfaces designed for chemical instrumentation control. The package "simple direct media layer" looks powerful for different interfaces. I suppose I'll have to dig for diamonds here. It would be more fun if I were more competent, but learning something is OK, too. Does anybody have any experience with this Linux use?? I never had the problem of too much to pick from with Windoze.