Booting Knoppix from a USB memory stick was all fun and games, until the cheap USB stick broke.  I could get another USB stick and copy the contents over.  "Or why not dual boot?" I thought.  My notebook has a 60gb drive and after doing house cleaning, I'm only using 15gb of it.  I don't want to reformat and have to reinstall Windows.  Gparted to the rescue!  I used it to shrink down the Windows partition and add some new partitions for Linux (if people would like more details on this process, let me know, there's some tricks to do this).  Now I have space for Linux which flavor will I go with?

I've played with Suse, Red Hat, CentOS, Solaris, Knoppix, and BackTrack2.  This time I'd take a crack at Ubuntu.  I downloaded the latest version Feisty.  The install went very smoothly.  I had the wireless connection up and running in no time.  Bugger was the GPS units I had were not being detected.  A post on the 'net mentioned the same exact problem, yet the previous version worked.  Ah ha!  I downloaded the previous version Edgy and its install wasn't as smooth, but still a good experience (the wireless setup isn't as hands off as it is in Feisty). 

The trick to get an Earthmate (LT-20) GPS working in Edgy was to compile GPSD v2.34.  You can't "apt-get install gpsd" here since you will get v2.33 which when mated with the LT-20 gps unit and Kismet, does not fully work.  Getting gpsd 2.34 to compile was a bit of a trick.  The install file suggests using autogen.sh to build the files.  That didn't work out too great for me and I opted for ./configure and then make.  Here you have to stay on your toes and catch the errors and apt-get the necessary dev packages.  When you do this right, gpsd will compile.  Once compiled, do make install and life will be good.  

Now I've got a dual boot XP and Ubuntu setup.  Ubuntu actually runs pretty darn nice.  I can get on the 'net.  I've already pimped Firefox with the extensions I need.  Kismet + gpsd + (gpsdrive || jigle) works (with speech too, although a bit too annoying for my taste to leave enabled).  Ubuntu has some nice office tools which I have yet to play with.  All in all, I'm going to give Ubuntu a try and will see if I can wean myself off of Windows.