LinuxQuestions.org - Fresh install not performing

Dell Dimension 8300 Dual Processor Pentium (R) 4, 3.00 Ghz. RAM 1008.9, nVidia FX 5200; 20 GiB hdd: Linux Mint 8 ME; 80 GiB hdd: PCLinuxOS 2010 Gnome; Linux Mint 1 Debian; xppiratededition.

I’ve just done a fresh install of PCLinuxOS GNOME, but can’t get things working like I want. First thing is updating the install, but I don’t see how to do that. My other GNOME distributions (this isn’t my primary computer) have update managers. Here, Synaptic Package Manager isn’t marking any upgrades. Neither is the terminal (though I know that isn’t recommended here). The top two repositories from the repository speed test won’t connect [my internet connection is fine - see attached screenshots (can I do attachments in this forum?)].

Okay, I don’t see an attachment button, so I’ll just type a little more. For both http://mirror.pclinuxclub.com/pclinuxos/apt/ (1232 bytes/second), and http://ftp.riken.go.jp/pub/Linux/pclinuxos/apt/ (345 bytes/second), I’m getting an error box saying, “Could not download all repository indexes . . . The repository might be no longer available or could not be contacted because of network problems . . ..”

I’ve tried to install Miro. The miro-3.0.3-1pclos2010.i586.rpm package downloads okay. But when I open it (try to open it) with Synaptic Package Manager, it doesn’t install the package, nor does the package subsequently appear Synaptic’s searches. When I save the package and then double-click on it in downloads, nothing happens.

The other operating systems installed on this computer work just fine (though xppiratededition does have one major deficiency that’s outside the scope of this forum).

As always, any and all help given me is much appreciated.