
After trying over 25 Linux distros, finally, the only one that works out of the box for me is PORTEUS. It took me quite a while to find it, but now I have, I will stick with it so long as my vye can handle it.
I think that the vye s18 mini is a strange little beast for various reasons, not least the AMD Geode LX processor. I still have not got the onboard wifi figured as yet but at least my mini usb wireless dongle was picked up immediately.
Thanks again to all involved.