Steve, Thanks for the ArcGIS thoughts! I did some digging and came across this: http://spanring.eu/blog/2006/07/02/arcgis-on-mac-os-x-2/ They were getting ArcGIS 9.X to run (well even) on MacOS X with Parallels; Now I am a born-again newbie but as I understand it OS X is a Linux derivative, and Parallels is a means of faking a Windows OS (XP etc.) on the Mac. Do folks know if this might mean there is some hope for a Linux install that can be rigged to run Arc? Thanks so much, PS ESRI's (producer of Arc) site is supremely unhelpful as they aren't interested in much other than server support for Linux and a basic reader function. PPS Red Hat's site didn't give me much to go on.