THought I'd kill two birds with one stone here:

Problem #1: I've been experiencing slowdowns and sometimes outright stoppages of my system while in KDE. Recent changes are:

1) Moved from Gnome to KDE
2) Running small scale Apache server in background
3) New wireless keyboard & mouse

I don't think it's Apache, as it's been running for a while.

Problem #2: I have two USB devices ( a Hub and a webcam) that I can't find support for. I'm primarily concerned about the hub, though, since it's *supposed* to be supported by default, yet no devices attached to it show up.

Would upgrading to FC 3 help with either of these problems?

If your webcam is a Logitech quickcam then you're out of luck, it is very hard to get any info to code drivers for it & the ones available have been coded through reverse engineering meaning they don't yet work decently.

As for the HUB does it work on another machine ? It could simply be that the HUB is faulty.

The HUB worked fine in XP. As for the cam, it's a Logitech Quickcam express, so I'm assuming it's a no go. What about the speed problems? I unhooked the wireless reciever and it speeded up significantly. Do you think the enhanced USB support in 2.6 kernel would help with speed? If so, should I install FC3? If so, do you know of a good guide for me to use for the upgrade?

You will definenly get a lot more responsive UI with 2.6 kernel unless you have some fundamental problem with your KDE slowdowns.

So then, the next question is: How to upgrade. I tried to use a homemade kernel, but many modules didn't work. I got the stupid "QM_MODULES" error, even with the new modules-init. Should I just burn some FC3 disks and use them to upgrade everything, try the yum scheme (again) or try something else?

You need to upgrade several system packages to able to use 2.6 series of kernel. We had a thread about this here too..

If you want to do the upgrade, then the best way would be to use the FC3 CDs. Keep in mind that RH9 is rather old and you would get a much neater reasult if you just made a clean install of FC3 or some other distro with 2.6 kernel.

I might be willing to format reinstall, since all of the yum upgrade schemes I've tried have failed miserably.

hi,

if you have a crossover usb cable try linkin the two pcs that way and se if it is not the USB problem like 1.1 or 2 incompatibility?

if not then see if it is the actual usb port that is not working?

j4m32,

I plugged the keyboard into both ports, it worked on both (with the slowdown still).

ok,
the usb hub could be faulty try it in windows (if you have it) if not try a mini distro to see if is not the the linux auto mount or core that needs updating

j4m32,