vector drawing, desktop publishing and super user friendly distros

[Becker, Rob]

Vector Drawing 
I've been looking for a decent vectory drawing app a la Adobe Illustrator for Linux for my 
girlfriend.  Is is possible to purchase Corel Draw 9 anywhere?  I noticed it is no longer available 
from Corel.  Any ideas?  I would prefer to use Free Software if possible, what is available?  I've 
looked at xfig, it's tolerable for basic drawing but I doubt it will cut it for what she needs.  
The KDE vector drawing app seems ok, but lacks some high level text editing features.  I've also 
attempted to get Sketch installed, but have run into some problems.  Does anyone out there have 
experience with this kind of application and have any recommendations?
Desktop Publishing
I've read a little about Scribus for desktop publishing, but it seems to have very little 
installation documentation on the website.  Has  anyone installed and used it?  If so, what are 
your thoughts, impressions?  Does anyone know of other Desktop Publishing software for Linux?  I've 
used the OpenOffice Draw tool and it can get the job done to some degree.  Any thoughts 
recommendations?
User Friendly Distros
I'm looking to build a pc for my girlfriend's mother.  I'll likely be dropping by on occasion to 
feed an care for the PC but I'm too far away to rush over and fix every little thing that might 
break.  As such, I'm installing Linux.  I would like to try out some of the Windows user distros, 
but would like some opinions before I go downloading and burning.  Some of the distros I'm 
considering are Lycoris, ELX, Xandros along with Mandrake and Redhat.  I have experience with the 
last two and know that they are both decent.  I'm curious about the others.  Lycoris seems to have 
frozen their distro back in January.  I tried it back then and it crashed on install on every pc I 
tried.  I noticed they are selling boxed versions now.  Is there a more recent release than build 
44?  Their website has little info that I could find.  What distros have people tried?  What are 
your thoughts opinions? 
Sorry for the long message.
Thanks.
Rob