Tried another Linux distro

As the old Toshiba Tecra8000 laptop was/is doing nothing anyway I thought why not.
I downloaded the 'Debian 3.1 R5 network install' cd and fired it up (it's the easiest way as the iso is something like 100MB and therefore fits on a rewritable, everything else will be downloaded at request; the website has something like 14 iso's for this release and I have no intention to find out which ones I would need). I chose the 'put everything in one partition' option because the laptop has a small 6.5 GB disk and there will be a lot of stuff to download (to be honest, this installation is the second try so I knew what was coming: during install of the downloaded stuff the 1.9GB partition was full).
Installation of the base system went smoothly enough and after the first reboot even my PCMCIA network card was recognised without missing a beat. The system started to download some necessities and then asks for the kind of software: 'desktop' looks about right and downloading continues for a few hundred MB's (still a lot better then any couple of iso's).
After doing some shopping I came back to find the system waiting for my okay for using the 'vesa' driver for it's X server (it sounded familiar so what the heck). Mouse detection is no problem and then the system asks all kinds of stuff about the display. Fortunately, I had found that out before. After that there is more unpacking going on (the harddrive is purring for about an hour). Finally it's ready, the screen becomes a blur and it's the 'fingers crossed' moment while I wait for the login prompt of the graphical interface. It works and I get the familiar looking desktop. So far so good, but exploring the system will have to wait until I have nothing better to do.