I'll throw a me-too in for Knoppix installed to the HD for it's
quick/easy sake. I haven't dug into Debian at all before though, so I
honestly don't know what the differences are under the hood. 

If you want a 'real' installation, AND you want to learn a bit about it
all, I'd definitely say go for Gentoo. It won't be point & click, but
the documentation is great, and the people in the forums are very
willing to help when and where they can.

I had some experience prior to diving into Gentoo, but not too much, and
I had only used Madrake/Redhat, so all the 'under the hood' stuff was
still relatively unknown to me, so I don't think you'd have that much
tougher a time. Just make sure you grab all the hardware config
information you can to make any troubleshooting easier, should a device
not work. Thankfully, this is a rarer and rarer occurance with more
recent distros.

Best of luck!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org 
> [mailto:tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org] On Behalf Of Phil Crissman
> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 6:10 PM
> To: TCLUG Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [TCLUG] Distro Advice
> 
> 
> 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
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