Newb Hoses Install - Story at 11

[Eric P <eric.maillist@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

An upgrade (under Etch) doesn't want to finish.  I clicked 'Mark All
Upgrades' in Synaptic, but it keeps failing on udev.

It says:
udev requires a kernel >= 2.6.12, upgrade aborted.

However, the newest kernel I show in Synaptic is only 2.6.8.

The 'Mark All Upgrades' process did finish installing MOST of Gnome
2.10, and although I can boot into Gnome 2.10, it's not usuable (menu
won't display, key shortcuts don't work, mouse speed is way off and
won't adjust using gnome-mouse-properties, gconf doesn't run, etc.).  So
I'm sending this SOS from IceWM.

Some history.  I did a dist-upgrade a month or so back following these
steps.
1. Backup /etc/apt/sources.list and replace all 'stable' to 'testing'
(or 'unstable')
2. apt-get update
3. apt-get upgrade (necessary?)
4. apt-get -u dist-upgrade

I must've left an 'untesting' in there somewhere (I think it was just
some Scribus files), so my virtual terminal now says GNU/Linux
testing/unstable'.

Anyway, any tips would be much obliged.  I don't mind doing a fresh
install if that's what is needed.

Thanks for reading...
Eric P.