I believe Corel has released a free version of Photo-Paint for Linux. Check their site. I've been programming and using computers since the days of CP/M. I triex Linux. The GUI (KDE) felt clunky compared to a Mac or Windows but that was a minor issue. The first app I tried to install required more commandline silliness than I've seen since the early days of DOS. Linux may be a good fit for the server room or a managed environment with plenty of support. In my opinion though, it's not a viable choice for the average home user yet. I know some people have an almost religious aversion to Microsoft for various reasons. My experience with Windows 2000 has convinced me that a lack of stability is not a viable argument. Using NTFS, the system is rock solid. I haven't run scandisk in well over a year, simply because Poser has eaten up so much, I don't have the free space to run it. The system still runs flawlessly. On rare occasions, Windows will repair an index entry at bootup. The one crash I've had (a hardware failure) was repaired easily with no loss of data. If there's any secret, it's a clean install, not an upgrade, which is probably a good idea for any OS. As for CL, first of all, remember that EGISys has something to say about this as well. Regardless of how easy the port may or may not be, there are also costs associated with support that continue, from fixing bugs to maintaining the inventory of CDs. The fact that bigger companies like Corel backed off from some of their initial Linux forays should be a hint that perhaps the money isn't on the desktop yet. As long as there are viable solutions for running Poser such as Lindows, VMWare, WINE or whatever, I simply don't see the compelling logic for CL. Jaqui, I look forward to your $30.00 Poser 5 killer. That should be something to see. I have VMWare so I can run Suse and be ready for it. BTW a search of my Win2K system drive reveals that emm386.exe must not be as necessary as you thought, since it isn't there.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken