The distribution for the whole family?
 

I have had my family on Fedora Core 2 for a while, but its been hell keeping the machines working. Things just keep getting worse. I have found that I don't like Red Hat based distros in general, so I have the following question:

What is the best Debian based distribution for an entire family? It needs to be simple, and have plenty of plugins (for java, flash, css decryption for DVD's, etc....)

I have taken a liking to MEPIS, but if you can think of a better more maintainable distro for my entire family, I would greatly appreciate it.

*Note: I am rather new to linux myself, but I have quite a bit more experience than the rest of my family, so I am willing to do a little manual configuration if required.

Thanks much,

Jeremy Pedersen
:Pengy:

Well, Im the only one in the family with computers skill (years of windoze practice) and I just recently moved to Linux. So did my family (decided not to give'm the choice) and the only thing so far they have problems with is remembering the password for their account (which now I know they have noted down in a notebook by the PC).
My distro is FC3 (as stated somewhere on the left).

Try Mepis. It's has good HW detection and very friendly. They also have a good bunch of users to help you in IRC and on forums.

Mepis, as you mentioned is a good solid distro. I have my family on it. Ubuntu is also good, but you'll need to install the "extra" options you mentioned by hand.

I think that you should go with Ubuntu.

Well if there are kids too, Mepis is the choice. Because it is KDE, which is a bit more viberant.

family linux
 

Yes, there are children. I am only 15 myself, with a computer challenged father and a 13 year old sister. I like to pursue my own computer projects, but I want my family to be able to feel the power of Linux without many problems, so ease of administration is key.

I'd reccomend Ubuntu if you have a broadband connection. You can always "apt-get" KDE.

The most impressive Debian-based distro I've tried is the one that always seems to be overlooked - Libranet. Easy install, more packages than you can shake a stick at, lots of nice GUI tools for system administration (including the easiest tool for kernel recompilation I've ever seen), Nvidia drivers pre-installed.....You get the picture.

In fact, the only reason I gave it up is that it's hell to keep it updated on dial-up. If you have a broadband connection, I'd give it a try.

Personally, I would go for Mandrake. :)

(Of course, these kinds of threads are generally a "my distro is best!" kind of thing. ;) )

gotta go with Kanotix
 

Kanotix is the best for kids and new linux users in general, imo. My family has taken right to it, an 11 year old did homework on it with no help at all. Very graphical, auto hardware detection, actually useful included software. Only catch, for you at least, is you need to "fix" the dvd encryption thing yourself (isn't that the same for all distros?)

try it out, get it here

SuSE is a very good, user friendly distro with more than enough packages to make the family happy.

I've heard some good things about Libranet, which is debian based, and at this moment am downloading the ISO images to try it out.