Funny old world...
On one thread I find myself supporting Microsoft's proprietary NTFS filesystem and on the other I find myself supporting Linux!
Both good OSes IMHO, but with different approaches and philosophies.
And prices of course.....
Well, potential Linux newbies, what can I say except that Keef's terrible and mysterious difficulties are pretty unusual. Most modern Linuxes cope extraordinarily well with the different hardware they encounter and for very many people installation goes smoothly and common things work without further fiddling. To get things really tuned up and zinging you WILL have to poke around the net and ask questions and read a primer, no question. "Some assembly required" as they say.
"Can I hope to install Linux straight out of the box and have an OS that works as well and as easily as MS?"
Probably not, but remember that you're getting the whole katootie for free as opposed to:
Microsoft XP Professional - Upgrade - $199 U.S., Full version - $299 U.S.
Microsoft Office 2003 Student and Teacher Edition - $149.00
Microsoft Office XP 2002 Professional with publisher - $214.95
Microsoft Corporation Microsoft Office Standard Edition ... - $374.95
Finally, many Linux distros have a Live-CD version which boots and runs directly from a CD, so you can try it out and check basic compatibility with your system without affecting your current installation or doing anything to your hard drive. The Live-CDs are slow of course but enough to give you an idea.
Good luck to all of you, Windows and Linux users alike!
PS: Keef, to satisfy my curiosity, could you post the changes you had to make to bootmisc.sh and local.rules (they're in your notebook)?