BackTrack 3

I installed BackTrack 3 on my PC at work. Installing it in a dual boot configuration along with XP proved to be a nightmare. Messed up my XP partition once and was unable to get dual boot working properly. It'd work fine for 2-3 days and then mess up.  At first it was LILO giving crazy errors and garbled text, so I  followed instructions posted by GoodGirl in Remote Exploit forums and installed GRUB.I don't know if it really worked for people who posted there thanking her, but that tutorial has many errors.
 Using BackTrack 3 hasn't proved to be a good experience either. It has quite a few bugs, or maybe its just the under powered PC I have here (256MB RAM only). My list of annoyances:
1) Linux is fast. Much faster than Windows with little lag times and programs almost never  hanging up. But BT 3 is an exception. Its very slow, running 2-3 programs simultaneously is sure way to slow down or crash everything. I've installed this OS 2 times with different images. (USB one)
2)  We have a proxy here.  I tried my best but was unable to get any program except browsers and chat clients to use the proxy for accessing external networks. Updating doesn't work either. I'm unable to find a  proxy setting for system like there is one for Windows services.  Wise guys at RE forums had their own ethicaly White Hat views on this.
3) Compiz Fusion is a complete dud. Themes don't work properly. Not to mention you can't download new themes due to proxy restriction. Maybe its due to low RAM.
4) Mouse has gone crazy. It cannot differentiate between single and double clicks. I tried almost everything in Mouse settings, increasing/decreasing sentivity, lag time, changing themes. But its stuck. Sometimes my clicks get recognised as single at other times they are double. You can guess the results. Same mouse works fine in XP.
5) GUI installation has been removed. Now its back to command line installation. You can copy the installation script,  bt3.kmdr file from older distros for graphical intall though. Here is the file. Some senior members say that they prefer people to use thumbdrives for running BT 3. Why'd anybody use thumbdrives if they can install on HDD except in rare cases?
BT 3 Beta and even XP are a lot better than this (except for proxy). I'm still using BT 3 Beta on my home PC. No use taking chances with all that data there.

Experience with BackTrack 3(Linux)

Using linux (BackTrack) is proving to be a real learning expereince. I always wanted to use Linux instead of Windows as my  primary OS. I tried shifting to linux many times in the past. tried using Xandros, Ubuntu, Red Hat and some more flavours. but couldnt get anything done with them. Not that they were particularly bad. Main reason was lack of a relable internet connection.
Nowadas with a good net connection, anytime am stuck with something I just search it on any search engine (Google mostly) and more often than not I have the solution within miniutes.
I was unable to do so earlier without internet.
Nowadays almost every Linux distro based on ny platform supports almost every hardware straight out of the box, but still many times you need to dowload some file  to make something work.
In my case, I havent been able to use my RTL8139 chpset NIC work :-|
Not that I particularly need it. Onboard card works well without a hitch..but still I'd like  it to work,. Just for the sake of challange

:D

I've downloaded and successfully installed many good software,
list includes
VMware (server and player , both free)
Opera Browser
Some misc system software including Wine, sqlite3, postgres and many more.
Currently downloading OpenOffice. I hope it'll install fine without  givingmuch trouble now
Finally learnt to use multiple desktop option.
Still some stuff proves o be quite difficult

Games for one. No windows game will work  here.
Sometimes, some games seem to  work with Wine, but they crash soon. Updating the software to a newer version was of  no help.

Then  tried installing Cedega, but waas put off by their ridiculous  5 Euro per month subscription fee. Thats too much to pay  in any case.
Then I tried installing the free version, Cedega CVS. After going through numerous guides, installing dozens of packages am still unable to run any game.

To top that, BackTrack lacks support for multi-channel sound.

Enquiring about these issues in BT forum gives response, "This is a pen-testing distro. Not meant for games, music etc" :|
Well., I can understand that, but even with a pen test distro, a person sometimes will really like to use it as his/her primary OS.  This point aparently escaped the notice of the BT people.
Not much use of complaiing. They'vce made and released this excellent OS for free afterall.

My windows installation still stays..for games only.  :\