So, was there, like, a question you wanted to ask, or are you just kind of giving us a whitepaper status-of-your-linux statement? DHCP, if set up correctly, will provide your laptop with whatever it needs for whichever network you're on. Assuming your goal is to occcasionally be on any of the three networks, a script would be handy to do manual config on the manual network. Note that static vs. dynamic addressing is not the same as DHCP vs. manual configuration. If you're looking for help with the lock-up, can you start the laptop in console or single-user mode? Do you know what chipset, refresh rates, RAM, and other settings the system uses? What did it use under Windows? What did it use under RedHat?