Well, whether you enjoy in depth techy stuff or not, if (as it sounds) this is really going to be your first foray into Linux, I'd consider one of the friendlier distros: redhat (or fedora, I guess), mandrake, or suse. I used RH for about 6-7 months, it was good for me to start with. Another good one is possibly using Knoppix, and installing directly from the Live-CD session. That is possibly the quickest and easiest way to install linux, and you wind up with a fully configured debian distro -- apt is certainly a nice tool to have. I've been using Gentoo for a few months now, but I personally am glad for the experience I had with other distros before I tried it. If you're willing to read the installation guide, ask questions in forums, etc, you could just start with Gentoo. Well, I've already listed 4 or 5 options: considering that what you want is to /narrow down/ your choices, I should probably stop there. :-) Have fun, Phil On Thu, 2004-01-08 at 05:13, John Ford wrote: > I plan to replace Windows with Linux on several PCs in my home. I know > that if I try a few different distributions, I'll get a feel for what > works best for me, but it would take months/years to do this. > > I can handle (and enjoy) pretty in-depth techy stuff, so I wouldn't > mind a distribution that needs some fiddling to get what I want. What I > want to end up with is: > > A few PC's for wife & kids, to handle web browsing, chatting, > music via Yahoo/Launch, new and old printers, cameras & scanners > (I have _no_ idea if Linux drivers are a problem area). > > An old PC (486) to act as a firewall between Cisco 675 and > the rest of our network. (Cisco connects to DSL line, intranet > is 10/100 cat-5, no wireless yet) > > A not-quite-as-old PC (366 Mhz Pentium II) to play with as a > web server. > > After I set it up, I want the wife & kids (not as techie as I) to be > able to apply fixes and upgrades, at least to their PCs. So the most > important feature of the distribution that I select will be the ability > to make the fixes & upgrades EASY. > > Thanks for any input... > > -jcf > > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list