I eventually downloaded mandrake 9.1 and installed it on my SATA drive.
the problem i'm having now is that linux is quite slow. i.e. it takes say 10 seconds for the openoffice splash screen to appear after executing it.
I just wondered if this is because the kernel isn't optimised for SATA and if anyone else has this problem? Of course, it could also be because i have so many services running

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