Not to disparage your mother, H.C., nor you—and I am happy that your experience was much better than mine—but I wonder how much of that success is due to a lucky alignment of hardware and software that played nicely with the Linux OS you chose. [Edited to add:] In re-reading your comment I see that your PC “came with its own flavor of Linux”. No wonder it worked so smoothly!

And I think I should point out for those nonplayers reading this that my problems aren’t entirely Linux’s fault. Some companies are much better at supporting Linux and the open source model than others. I’m not a codehead, so I know nothing about the details, but my understanding is that Microsoft can still be an impediment to developing open source solutions, too. I am willing to take the Linux headaches in order to avoid Microsoft as completely as possible.