Answer not needed, I'm keenly aware of the politics behind this.
But I'd forgotten about this "issue" and spent my time trying out what I though must be a viable distro...
But since it didnt detect my DGE-530 NIC, and the drivers that Dlink kindly provides need to be compiled, I'm SCREWED by the politics because a bunch of headers and fundamantal-to-any-Linux kernel source is not installed. Thats right, the most rudimentary component of the system besides the kernel itslef, not placed in /usr/src/linux. Flame*Nuclear.
And it doesnt exist as an option under the add-remove app's so called.. but FAR FROM complete.. "developent tools" section either.
Be giving Suse, Mandrake, etc another look. No time for Redhat games.
-PS anyone who wants to waste keytrokes telling me that *I* should research some Redhat specific way of getting the kernel - even if its obtusely hidden on a disk... dont bother.