OK in March I downloaded and installed the latest Debian Stable and all new apps on my new system. Flash wasn't available for my 64 bit chip, so I went with the 32 bit package.

Yesterday I made my first visit to the RR website with my new system. I had largely given up on it with my old Mandrake 10.1 and AMD K6 chip. I got nothing except a message I needed to upgrade my Flash to the newest version. Maybe I don't belong in Linux, since I want a system I can use without a lot of tweaking. But then I don't want to spend a lot of time on security issues either. Now the Flash I am using works just fine on Fox News and other heavy Flash dependent sites. Well Kaffeine goes on with my Shoutcast Sinatra instead of the audio from the videos.

When I signed up for cable, I wasn't told I could have Roadrunner, Earthlink, or AOL, but was stuck with RR. I find them Linux hostile. Would I be happier with Earthlink? The same $30 a month buys me half again the 512K I am getting with RR. I might even be able to replace My Yahoo with My Earthlink booting another website that requires constant tweaking of my system to use. I had to turn off Dom Inspector to make their email work. I want to identify the frying pan and the fire before I jump.

Debian has issues with its 64bit implementation when it comes to any proprietary software like flash. There attitude is that if it's free software, you have the source code and can recompile for 64 bit and if it's proprietary(i.e. source code unavailable) why should they bother. They don't want to encourage the use of proprietary software.
If you insist on running a 64 bit distro and want good flash compatibility, I would not recommend debian. I believe both mandriva and opensuse have more accommodating 64bit versions available. If you really like debian, here's some instructions for hacking debian etch 64bit to get flash working:

http://www.fsckin.com/2007/09/20/how...n-debian-etch/

Don't know how this would work on debian stable.

Flash is working OK for nearly all the websites I use. My whole point is that I am am not interested in playing around with my system to accommodate an unfriendly website when I can go elsewhere.

Guess what. I tried accessing the RR site using Konqueror and it seems to be working fine. Konqueror also is doing better with www.allexperts.com than I remember. I wonder if the update I had to do before I could apt-get k3b fixed some problems with Konqueror. In some ways I like it better than Iceweasel. It is nice having a single program to do file management and browsing. Now if it would just do Foxmarks.