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The point is the average user would not know these things. Luckily for me, I had you, and others, to guide me thru. I am using Kopete for AIM and it's okay, but I liked the AIM interface and a few more things that make it more user-friendly.

I did not try Fedora, but I did try Suse, SlackWare, RedHat 9.1 and Mandrake. So far, I like Mandrake the best and, like I said, it has tremendous potential.

Unfortunately, I develop, exclusively at this point, in MS (VB, .NET, ASP & C#). If not for that, I probably could make the transition to Linux much faster.

And you are the exception, n3wbi3, I've looked around on other help sites and most Linux "gurus" give very generic, non-specific help. Typical answer: "I figured it out and you can too".

The point is the average user would not know these things.

Thus the problem is not one with the technology, its a problem with the documentation. If when you install a copy of Linux there was a 'hello and welcome to Linux' telling you things like that it would not be an improvement in technology. I have not used LinSpire (I think formerly WinSpire) but I have heard it provides a pretty nice interface.

Unfortunately, I develop, exclusively at this point, in MS (VB, .NET, ASP & C#). If not for that, I probably could make the transition to Linux much faster.

Well ASP runs fine through chillisoft, but C# and the like require mono which is far from production ready. Basically after MS lost a suit to sun about their hijacking of Java the started C#. MS does alot of crap like this SQL server is not ANSI99 compliant for no other reason than Microsoft wants to have 'their own thing'. Example: the 'is' statement does not work in sql server 2000, you have to use '=' which is not a huge thing but as the 'is' clause is what every other database uses (Informix, Oracle, DB2, ...) it is a nagging problem for someone like me.

And you are the exception, n3wbi3, I've looked around on other help sites and most Linux "gurus" give very generic, non-specific help. Typical answer: "I figured it out and you can too".

Im sorry you ran into that, I can honestly tell you I started out like you three years ago (maybe a little better off on the *nix side). I found good help from people until I got comfortable troubleshooting myself. When I set up my first sendmail server with a squirrelmail interface I was drowning in problems, one of the developers started mailing me off the forum to get the problem fixed quicker.