You'll find one for your computer that will be hassel free.

Newer kernels do support more hardware.

Try to roll your own kernel, you can leave out the stuff you don't need and load the modules you want.

1. kalarm works fine for me (Mandriva 2006.0 free x86_64). Maybe the problem with your kalarm is related to your sound problem.
2. What soundcard do you have?
3. What network card do you have and what is the configuration of your LAN (eg. do you have a DSL router giving out IP addresses via DHCP?)?

Thanks, GlennsPref. I don't have any idea how to change the kernel. I'm having enough problems already. I'm going to look at some other distros.

Snowbat, I am amazed. So you can change the settings of kalarm without it crashing?

I installed 86_64 twice and finally installed the 32 bit version. I could not alter kalarm settings on any of those installations. The installer put the smb kernel on my computer each time, so each time I had to install the default kernel and uninstall the smb kernel. kalarm settings crashed before and after.

Please excuse me if the following details are insufficiently precise. I have to use my old computer until I've got a new installation working. The network card is nVidia and the Mandrake Control Centre eventually accepted a driver I got from nVidia (not required by Suse - it was quite happy with the network card).

At present the network card is unused. That's another story. I'm trying to get the two computers to communicate but at least one isn't playing.

The soundcard is realtek AC97. I've used an Alsa-based driver installer in an alternative installation (Suse 10) with mixed results.

I don't see how a netcard or a soundcard could affect the kalarm settings tool. I only tried to change details like the start-of-day time, the run mode and the non-leap year repeat date. All went well until I pressed OK or Apply, whereupon kalarm crashed. Incidentally, kalarm is working happily on Suse10 on the same computer. Unfortunately, Suse10 has no executable for kjots (!), so I'm still looking for a decent distro.