After several abortive attempts, I now have an X desktop running on the new machine and have managed to get a lot of the apps I want installed. The fact that the new machine is amd64 is causing a few issues as many of the ports don’t work requiring i386! This is a pain, but so far it’s only really effected Skype – which while some people claim will run on Linux amd64 installs, it doesn’t seem very happy running here.
OpenOffice seems as though it has issues as well, but I think they mainly resolved around Java.
I’ve ordered the twin monitors and so when they arrive I’ll be in a position to finish setting up the desk and hopefully resume normal service. After the events of last week and being away all weekend there has been a delay in my work on some of my other projects!