I decided to give debian a try. Now I'm wondering which I should download: woody or sarge.
I know people run into troubles with a nforce2 motherboard and ati videocards, both of which I have. So maybe one of them is better for that task?
Another thing is that for woody I probably can get away with 2 iso cd's, but I'm not sure for sarge. Ofcourse it matters too, 7 iso images is probably too much for my restricted connection.
Maybe some other things I should take into account?

Anyway, your time in helping is greatly appreciated.

I'd go for sarge. Its more up to date, and will likely support everthing you have. I downloaded the first CD only and used apt-get to download what I needed.

Thank you for the answer! Did just what you suggested. Tried to install and something failed, even don't know what. I am baffled. Hopefully I can manage to at least know what the problem is tomorrow.

had many problems myself. If you want something that's a lot easier to use but still more unix like than mandrake or redhat then I recommend checking out slackware if you haven't already.

I did manage to actually get through the errors (about 15 or so) and update but I had to use lynx to browse around when it had removed kde.. and when it finally was updated kopete wasn't working right and was causing the system to slowdown probably because of some problem or another.. I can't see debian as worth it at this point and I've tried upgrading from libranet as well as woody.

I'm running a sarge at home, and a woody as a server at work.
the woody is rock solid, though i recieved it and didn't install it. the sarge is as erattic as a chicken with its head chopped off.
i haven't been able to get openGL running with the ati (radeon 9200 SE) the mouse scroller comes and goes randomly (microsoft optical intelly 1.04 on ps/2), the sound took ages to fix, and the connection to the web keeps crashing along with various others.
all in all, either it was me or the system i dunno (i am a n00b) but i'm gonna downgrade to the woody for a while, at least 'til exams are over

must admit that the woody at work is rock bloody solid. its better than anything else i've seen.
those aere my 2 bits
if any1 cares to c any part of the /var/log, or /init.d, or anything else, i'll happily comply