After all of the problems installing SuSE Linux on my Dell Optiplex GXa
machines (some old boxes that I’m using for wireless gateways) I
figured that I’d jump to Fedora. Fedora Core 1 installed just
fine … and took almost no time … except …

Once I rebooted I was unable to get the integrated 3Com Ethernet
adapter to work. I figured that I would jump to Fedora Core 2 and
see how that worked … just for the fun of it. No good … the
3Com driver still wouldn’t work.

I had to do some real digging to finally find the answer … this bug report at Redhat detailed the problem … Kudzu!  Seems that Kudzu might just leave the board in a weird state …

I followed the instructions as was written … disable Kudzu on boot … and
everything works fine. It was interesting to see this resolved as
of this month! Well … now I’m onward and upward …