Unless I'm missing something, it seems that there are some serious flaws with the install package, of which I downloaded the latest yesterday.

(1) Icons do not appear in most of the templates. This problem seems twofold. First, some of the URLs point to gifs not pngs, for example, right after a blank install you get a wink.gif which does not appear and is a broken link (wink.png is included.) Second, I'm noticing that if you choose other templates, e.g. Green Default, it is looking for icons in each of these templates' image folders that are not included, e.g. English path which there is none. It can be solved I guess by copying other icon folders into the template folders in each type, e.g. green, red, etc. but it's not really a template of a style any more.

(2) I can't get any of the categories and forums to publish. I'm stuck on this page yet everything seems to be installed properly. I'm wondering whether it's me in light of the above problem and what else might be lurking.

There are no categories in the forum defined yet.
An administrator should create them first from the
Administration Panel of the Joomla! OS CMS.
Inform them and tell them to hurry up!

Have you done a search? All of these are common issues caused by a variety of different reasons and each has a solution for fixing/repairing them. There is nothing wrong with the install package.

If the problems are so common:

(1) I should have easily found answers in the search

(2) There should be a sticky on this issue or, better yet, a read me along with the distribution.

The only solution I've found to some of the problems was installing the sample data and working from there. If you don't do that things just don't work.

Search result
www.bestofjoomla.com/component/option,co...emid,38/func,search/

Speak to the mods about stickies. I have nothing to do with that.

I'm confused - the search result is empty.

That is odd. I used the term "publish categories" and got a few results. Don't know why the search isn't working for you.

The link didn't include the term and if you look at it, it's just a bare link to search. Thanks.