[Sussex] newbie

[Adam Smith]

Hi, I'm a new member to the list and I've been told it's a good idea to introduce myself.

I'm 16 years old and from Eastbourne.  Currently studying Maths, Economics, Computing and German at Park College, Eastbourne.  I'm currently running Gentoo 1.4rc1 on my main box - an Athlon XP1600 AROIA @ 1.837 (hopefully more when I install my watercooling), 256mb PC2700 Crucial and an 80gb 'cuda IV.  

I'm relatively new to linux.  I was tied to Bill's apron strings until around a month ago when I installed Gentoo linux.  Before then I had tried Mandrake, Redhat and Suse but found the experience unfulfilling on my workstation machine - however I did use Redhat for a while on a P450 running Apache, PHP and FTP.  But then I tried Gentoo...  
I performed the install with very limited experience of Linux, and it took a while on my 56k connection even with the Stage 3 install but I got there in the end.  I then proceeded to install fluxbox which beats the Windows UI hands down for usability. So far I've found software for everything that I need.  Most programs I have found to be better than their Windows counterparts, and with the exception of OpenOffice which for some reason is terribly slow on my machine, everything else has been great.  The knowledge I gained from the Gentoo install is, in my opinion, far better than that which I could have learned from a lifetime of 'playing' with Redhat.

So far I'm loving Linux, I've actually been able to sell/give away most of my other boxes as for some reason I no longer need them.  I first decided to try linux after installing Smoothwall.  I was so impressed by the way it could operate router and firewall functions with perfect reliability whilst making frugal use of resources.

I'm also new to mailing lists, so please bear with me if I make an idiot of myself.

If you're still reading by this point, thanks.
Adam Smith