About Motif: It evolves just like KDE and GNOME, but doesn't bloat as much
And about downloads, that might depend of where you download from.
In the area where I live, it has gone from Impossible_to_run_even_300_baud via _ISDN_at_$400_a_month to perfectly OK in 3 years.
I was the first to have an Internet connection here, I ordered it in 1994, got it in 1996, but it cost about an average person's salary just to get mail - and it was unusable for anything else - with ISDN it would still take 15 min. just to get 5 mails.
Then the phone company went semi-private, and now, they dug up the street, and put in a cable just for me, I have my own cable!
And since 1999, I have been able to download anything with no errors.
It took some experimenting, at least with this particular modem (Alcatel Speed Touch) - I put in a hub to reduce the transfer rate and prevent the modem from resetting every 10 min.
Also, I use wget -c --passive-ftp - should the modem get a hickup, it will continue once it is back up.
It would be fun to see how some other people set up their Internet connections, and for how long they have had them?
Atle
PS: Historical note: My first "Internet" connection was a DataPak 2400 baud connection I had in Grimstad, 200 km from Oslo, where I worked.
This was in 1986, and working from home was just starting, I think I was the first in my village to work over the 'Net'.
I had no direct access to ArpaNet, but a BBS in my area downloaded all the interesting stuff, and gave access to Usenet. My 'PC' was a CompuPro-286 capable of runnning Uniplus System V when using a 68k processor card. The computers cost more than the house and cars together, and had the processing power of a slowish 486!
... ah, old people and their rants about old times :-)
/PS