Moral of the story? A newbie as lame as myself did quite well with Linux of various flavors on various levels of hardware; even though I realize i had setbacks, I figured out alternates and other ways around; and, finally I realized that Linux is worth the work, and is accessible to everyone.
Same with me, don't know anything 'bout PCs but installed Mandrake and Fedora and had no problem.
I can't understand that someone who boasts that they know alot about computers could say that they had trouble with linux.
That's the part which I find strange, a kernel hacker who gives up on Linux?