Redhat 8.0 installed quick enough, after I figured out how to make an IBM TP 600 boot off of CDROM. The slow bit was packing up the <1GB of stuff, scp'ing it over, and unpacking it again. I took the opportunity to clean out my mailfolders, and some (not all) of the junk that had accumulated in my /usr/local tree.
But anyway, it now mostly works (the wireless ethernet stuff is mostly all that s remaining), but it certainly is pretty. It's nice to have newer versions of mozilla and emacs as well.