hi all.
kind of tacky to ask "what distro should i install?" but here it is...
i have two older boxes, one 700mhz p3 and one 400mhz p2 (i think... it's been in the closet for a while now). on my last machine i had slack 10 installed, and rather enjoyed it, but i'm always curious about different distros. obviously, the hardware is older, so i generally crave something lightweight anyway.... i have no qualms about the so-called "difficulty" of using slack, but i also know that debian's apt-get is (so i've heard) THE BEST software management tool. currently, my fiancee has an imac on which i've installed fink, and i really appreciate the simplicity involved. i presume apt-get is similar, but then, slack's got pkgtool.
the question, then, is what would you say are the major differences between slack, debian, and bsd? i've read the info at distrowatch, btw, but there's no real side-by-side comparison.
of course, this thread may just fade away, but if anyone has an opinion to share, fire away.

Slack and Debian are opposites in most ways, similar in that both systems work quite well when you set them up properly. Slackware has bare package management (and almost no packages) where you manage all the dependencies yourself. Debian makes it easy to install any package and has tons of packages.

The feeling is very different. Slackware is for people who like to understand everything that runs on their system, and Debian is for people who don't care about what runs on their system as long as everything works. Like any generalization, it's not perfect, but Debian is the closest thing to a plug-and-play slam-dunk distro as I have seen. I keep one around to play with, but it works so well it's boring and I don't use it much.

*BSD is a different world from these two, although some of the Slackware guys (and a lot of other *NIX people) really like them. If you are down to these three I would say you haven't researched enough, because they are pretty different in a lot of ways. And BSD is not a distro, it's a loosely-connected family of OS consisting of various varieties.

If you know how to tune a distro you can get anything to perform well. Why don't you install a handful and see what you like?

IMO, Slackware and Debian are the two best choices in GNU/Linux. BSD is a wild card, to me, and has good reason for consideration if 'free' software is very important as a principle. Generally, I say people should choose Slackware if their interest is the OS, and Debian if their interest is based in Applications. I am an unapologetic Debian supporter.

Here is my own Debian Sales Pitch
Here is another Debian promotion, in which the differences between the two distros is addressed, and here is a recent exhaustive consideration of the issue, slanted toward Slackware.

thanks for the replies, guys. Randux, I will certainly try BSD and Debian (already have used Slack). i understand that they are all different: different is what I'm looking for. at present, I'm running SLES9 for my CLP training/self-education but i'm going to yank the old 400mhz out of the closet and give those two a whirl.

If you are into different, run 'em all!

And remember BSD is not a single OS. There are FreeBSD, NetBSD, PCBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD, and more that I never heard of

For a desktop, prefer linux because it has better support for software like flash plugin, java, drivers, etc.

i think i'm off the BSD idea, having read almost all the docs at the freebsd and openbsd websites. i think what i'm going to do is install debian and see how i like it, though half the fun i had in slackware was all the tweaking it involved. by the time i had my last slack box running the way i liked it, it was a sweet setup, fast as hell on a 500mhz box. suse is nice and easy, but where's the fun in that? however, i am particularly interested in apt-get and am going to give it a shot. though i've heard that once you go slack, you never go back... that may be where i finally end up, but in the meantime, i'm just going to play with various distros: first debian, and then probably try out whatever looks good after that. i may just end up putting debian on one box and slack on the other! what i simply do not want is what major corporations think customers are seeking: out of the box and running. that is to say, i want a nice base install, i want my internet to work (no problem with DHCP) and i want to be able to build up from there. rickh, thanks for the links: read them and they were very helpful. why can't i find this stuff on my own? (oh well)