The machine is Intel Dual Core, 2Gb RAM. I have a direct-downloaded copy (Oct 15) of 'elementaryos-freya-amd64.20150411' which burns to usb and can be tried/installed. Problem there was that the repository seemed to have incorrect addresses so I wasn't able to download the programs I wanted, although I was able to get Firefox and browse with it. When I checked your site again, I discovered a newer download 'elementaryos-0.3.2-stable-amd64.20151209' which I pulled down, SHA checked, burned to usb and only got to the Try stage before the machine announced that it had no network connection. Re-trying the older download on the same machine, the net connection was fine. I'm a complete newbie to Linux, so don't know how to manually configure the network so I can find out if the newer version has the correct URLs - I was in any case figuring to try to get the Synaptic manager once I got on the Net. Any thoughts for a numpty? Should I go back and try for Synaptic on the older version? The newer one is quite a bit bigger so I don't know what else I might be missing by doing that.
OK - Went back to the old one and installed Synaptic with much more success. Also found this - most helpful - I think I'm probably upgraded to the newer release after following the first few steps. I find Elementary to be more accessible than other Linux distros I've tried and I hope it can get me out of the Gates syndrome.
