the hard drive died, end of story for now. I'll bookmark that page and read it when I get the time.
My mistake for writing a diary of the steps I took to try and get my brother on Linux. I followed the Howto, and the only thing I forgot was to install WINE as root. WINE worked, the Diablo II install was working, until the hard drive decided to die and click annoyingly. Don't know why, but I have pathetic luck with hardware. RMAed the drive, will try again when the replacement comes in.
System at home I tried to install Linux on, the motherboard went bad and wouldn't boot anything, not even a floppy. Another spare system either the CD-ROM or IDE controller went bad and gave me Media Errors on a Linux install. Seems to run Windows fine if I keep hitting retry on install.
If I had the money for another system I'd buy it and have a system to run Linux on. But I am broke, and living check to check. I only have one good system, and there is only room for one OS on the hard drive.