I updated everything in Mandrake 9.2 with the updater and all my files seem to have been either moved to some other directory which I can't find or they were erased. I'm brand new with Linux and am trying to give in to it but so far it's been frustrating. I empathize with another XP user in that my XP system very rarely crashes and programs in the 9.2 system crash constantly. Regardless, I'm still willing to believe that the Linux system is the better one and am blaming my problems on my ignorance. So far, the only part that I've found to be better is the installation process.

I have other complaints:

1) My mouse wheel will not work.

2) I could not get my video DVDs to play (and especially not now that all of the programs have disappeared).

I'm using Gnome currently, but I think I like the other one better... what's it called... I forget, but I think it's a mute issue. It doesn't matter which I use, the files are all gone. Gnome is the only one that I can find a web browser in and that's the ONLY file I can find now.

Thank you,
Michael

Please don't blame all Linux distros for your problems with Mandrake. I had some issues with Mandrake 9.2 myself and that caused me to try out other distros. Now I'm a happy camper because I'm using Mepis, a distro based on Debian unstable, and I have a perfectly working Linux system for the first time since I've been trying and using different distros.

So don't blame Linux, blame the distro or maybe you could even do some research on your problems some more and find the answers.

Plus, kde 3.2.2 beats gnome hands down as a desktop environment. I have used both and I can configure kde 3.2.2 to do practically anything I want whereas Gnome doesn't have all the features I love. You can watch dvds with mplayer, xine and there are other choices available for dvds too that will work in gnome or kde.

Yeah, KDE is the one that I like better than Gnome. I would be using it right now, but I can't find any files with it. I've been looking over the Mandrake site for answers but it's hard to find a good search field with words so common as update and I'm not sure what key word someone may have used to describe files disappearing.

Thank you for your response.

There are other topics on the forums here concerning missing programs from the menu. I don't know what misssing files you are describing. Do a search on the forums here for some solutions that have been offered. But kde 3.2.2 comes with a menu editor and a menu updating tool. If you use them, you will find programs you can add to the menu.

Since I am now using the beta 3 version of Mepis, I have kde 3.2.2 working right. The beta 3 comes with kde 3.2.2 and I don't see any problems with it. When I used the latest stable version of Mepis, I had to upgrade to kde 3.2.2 manually to get it and there were some bugs that I had to fix. But there are no bugs in my beta 3 version concerning kde. At least none, that I've come across yet.