Mandriva 2008 Spring on the MacBook (from usb HDD)

I had always had problems getting Mandriva to boot (from usb HDD to Dell). The only version I ever got to work for me was MCNL which is/was a dutch version meant for use on a usb flash drive or LiveCD or something.
But when I retried that recently, even this didn't work.
So, I decided to try what's called the mini version of Mandriva 2008 Spring.
Downloaded to CD (696 MB) and installed to Seagate drive (sdb12=/, sdb11=/home).
As was the case with PCLOS, in the /boot/grub/menu.lst in Ubuntu, I had to use /dev/sda12 for the Mandriva partitions rather than the expected /dev/sdb12.
Nevertheless, I didn't have to make any similar changes in /etc/fstab to get Mandriva to boot (possibly because it uses UUIDs rather than /dev/sdax type configuration).
In any case it did boot fine but gave a very minimalist setup.
No icons on the desktop, none of my favourite packages available to download, downloaded and extracted Opera 9.50 and installed, but wouldn't start (problem may have been due to lack of jre.
So went to Mandriva Control Center (MCC) and updated my stuff.
When this was finished and it took about 30 minutes, I was able to ask for 3d desktop to be installed.
Then I rebooted but it wouldn't start. Kept giving me the old "your session lasted less than 10 seconds". However, this was nothing to do with a missing $HOME directory but was some problem with IceWM which I didn't understand.
So, I had to reinstall Mandriva...............will continue.