I'm a glutton for punishment. Today I downloaded the mini-install of Mandriva 2006. Very quick installation. This is not a live CD. I can tell it got my screen resolution correct. Only problem is i can't log on. I'll look at Mephis6. Thanks
Here's another computer savvy guy frustrated by Linux --->
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/linux-newbie/59661-incredibly-frustrated-noob.html?highlight=mandriva
Take a look at that "shelleytherepublican" website and the forum comments on it before you try any more Linux.
Yeah, I'll be the first to admit that Linux has a ways to go yet in terms of user friendliness. A lot of the problem is that documentation assumes that you know a lot more than you do, which is why it's best to work with a live person.
But, since I started playing around with it about 3 or 4 years ago, it's gotten easier by leaps and bounds. Mepis seems to be ahead of a lot of distros in user friendliness, including a lot of wizards where other distros tend to make you work from the command line.
More than once, I've had trouble getting a distro to run correctly on a particular computer, then when I installed Mepis, everything just worked. Even the modems (which are a sticky point with Linux) worked great with both laptops that I've run it on.
As I said earlier, when you get Mepis 6 up and running, ping me if you need help.
And, sorry you're getting spammed by the resident troll :).