Linux will always be over-complicated, I don't think installing Mandrake is necessarily the best remedy, it's like painting over rising damp and pretending it's not there.
If you're going to use something like Linux, unfortunately you have to spend time learning to use it so you can fix it when things go wrong, instead of resorting to reinstalls and things - if you're going to be doing that you might as well use Windows. If you try to hide the inner workings away from the user, they will never have a true understanding of the OS and when it fails, they're lost.
It's a shame QNX doesn't have the support that Linux does, it's much cleaner and a better candidate for Desktop use.
