SimplyMEPIS to the rescue.

[donecweb]

Well I messed up my SimplyMEPIS real well. I was playing around with encryption and the root. What I did was some how encrypted or changed or corrupted my root password. Remember not to do this. Anyway it is all fixed but it had me scared for awhile. I looked at several methods of recovering from the problem and tried several and probably ended up doing it the hard way. But the important part to me was I did it without using the terminal at all. I simply installed a new copy of SimplyMEPIS on a new partition and copied the files I needed from the old one to the new one. I had to reinstall a few programs like Quicken that run under Wine as the wine directory was protected by the root password. But I was happy that I could just reboot and see the old version to check to see if I got everything done right. This could not be done with Windows in any version I have used and I have used them all except Vista so far. Oh by the way I had also corrupted the password for my backup which didn't need to be password protected at all. But thanks to SimplyMEPIS I was able to recover quickly and easily without using any special steps like using the terminal just cut and paste or drag and drop. It was like magic to just drag folders or files and all the sudden the same settings I had before were there in my new version. I grabbed my password folder that had my special encrypted passwords over to my new version and the new version of KGpg opened them right up and worked without having to recreate them the same was true with most all the settings I had.

[StevenofNine]

This is exactly why, as a supplment to your Linux / Vista topic, no normal users are going to switch.

It takes someone comfortable with changing and altrering the root directories, registries and system configurations to know enough about computers to care about Linux.

Most people want their windows and they want it safe and fast. I jack with my work computer all the time. But I'm forced to leave the rest of the department essentially as is out of the Box, as everyone else wants their windows the same colour, their icons in the same spot, their animations the same, their clicking noises the same...

Computers are becoming less intimidating, but even the ubiquity isn't solving old problems.

We tell out 19 year old never install anything on the computers at home without asking. Yesterday she installed something. I asked her why. She said she wanted to look at it, then she'd delete it so it couldn't cause any problems...

You see what we're dealing with? And she's used computers since she entered day school.