After a LOT of help from my (Linux) friends, I now have a spiffy Mepis setup with Gnome desktop installed. Thanks to all!

But I can't find any way in Gnome to open a child-window in the same window view as the parent-window. So if I go several levels down in the file structure, I have several windows open, that must then be closed one at a time. Annoying!

In M$ Windows, there's an option to open any child-window into the parent-window view. I'm sure the same option exists in Gnome - but I'm $#@! if I can find it... Can someone help me out here? Thanks in advance!

there's an option in start>configuration>extra configuration>file manager

You may middle-click or shift-click a directory to open it and close the current one.

Alternatively, you may obtain a non-spatial filesystem view by right-clicking on "Home" or somesuch and selecting "browse".

Alternatively you may make a global setting /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser in gconf (may be called "configuration editor" in your menu). However, I would advise you to persevere with the open-new-windows mode: when you want to look at more than one thing at once it's very convenient, and you can just get used to middle-clicking when you're just navigating down a tree.

Or you could left click and choose open in new window whenever you want to see two things and make open in same window the default behaviour