So my experiments this weekend were not too successful. I installed Fedora Core 1 and Wine onto a low specification workstation and managed to install the render node. This started and display a splash screen and a nice gradient fill and a menu. It prompted me for a language. After a short pause it exited before drawing the rest of the screen. I tried installing the service pack and that either errors with an error "An installation support file could not be installed" or when run as a non root user it simply claimed that there was no node installed when there blatently was. Not sure what next... Might try a boot from CD type linux on my main machine to see if it is any better....