My tech took one look at the PCLinuxOS installation I had just performed when he came round on Sunday insisted that I download Ubuntu 10.10 which had just been released. Having had a bad experience upgrading from 9.04 to 9.10 I was less than enthusiastic but agreed to his request. So far the experience is 100% positive with no glitches. Needed a few extras to run some of my media files but these were all installed automatically after a prompt. Still get the odd flickering screen which I noticed with my previous Ubuntu installation so I'm assuming that this must be an OS "characteristic"
Apart from the slightly complicated and drawn out install process this really is such a complete solution now and I hope that it doesn't suddenly develop some of the issues I experienced last time.