Well kind of, up and running again, a few key points to remember for the future, to ensure this installs smoothly verify the following:

1) Apache mod_rewrite is installed

2) Correct Directive exists in the apache conf.

<Directory /home/
AllowOverride All
</Directory>

3) The .htaccess file is in place and correctly edited.

Note the software can run without the mod_rewrite but its get fugly, merely changing an option in the config.php sorts it out.