Hi Matt,
2) If you just want to go on with life, consider trying a dist-upgrade. Note that it could be hard to do because newer libc's only support newer kernels
I got bored and decided to give dist-upgrade a go. No problems whatsoever!.. And I'm still running 2.4.18.I'll try cd images from both the links you gave me sometime this afternoon, when my caffeine levels are sufficiently elevated. Hopefully this'll help you guys nut out the installer problem for release :)
Cheers, Peter