I just resurrected a not too old 640 GB HD AMD Quadcore With 4 GB RAM having an HD 3200 Radeon for graphics. I decided to set it up to be used by kids that range in age from 4 y/o to 12 y/o and an adult. Should I use one distro (if so, what)? Should I try and install several? Suggestions?

If you are not sure with distro suite you best .
I suggest download some live distro .
So you can try this distros without installing
There also live distros which can be used as a install distro

PcLinux or mint Mate would be good for children of that age, both are easy to use and both have games available in their repos that would probably be enjoyed by children that age( of course more in mint). However if you choose mint make sure to create accounts for you kids without sudo privileges as it would be too easy for them to break the system otherwise.

openSUSE 12.3 but with a lightweight DE like xfce
or with 4 gig ram you should not have many issues with KDE

I'd suggest looking at Mint and PCLinuxOS and seeing which you prefer. For the young ones, look at getting them to run Doudou off a USB stick: that way they can't cause or have any trouble:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/review...cat=13&ppuser=

Several good suggestions: I checked PCLinux, Mint Mate, and openSUSE, and some others. I will try openSUSE first I guess. openSUSE has an education focused sub-distro (see http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Syste...-e-52361.shtml ) which provides a nice list of software I can add to a conventional openSUSE. Well see how smooth the installation goes!

+1 for linuxmint

+1 Mageia

I would suggest Mint with MATE, especially if they have experience using Windows.

Ugh some experienced people are suggesting Mint Mate ... you are making me think! They are not overly windows trained though, the 12 y/o uses tar -zxvf and is playing nethack right now (which he installed himself in puppy linux). Perhaps a child "growing" up with Linux will have less of an issue than an older aldult who has lived with the Windows their whole life (if the only reason for MATE is similarity to Windows)?

Children will easily learn any distro, no matter how complex. It's the adult who will need it to be easy. If the kids are the prmiary users, I would suggest Slackware or Gentoo. They will get their hands dirty and really learn Linux, bash, and several other scripting and programming languages. Then in a couple or three years you'll have some young Linux gurus that you can tap for all the household computer configuration and maintenance duties that you don't have time for.

LinuxMint

I'd take almost any of the top distro's listed at distrowatch and try them. The kids will figure it out so that leaves the Admin Dad to decide how much they want to learn.

I prefer OpenSuse myself.

With that setup how about installing any distro mentioned (to my mind openSUSE is as suitable as any other, really) with you as the only one with root (or sudo as applicable) access. Then stick VirtualBox on it and let the kids play with other distros in VMs. I'm a big kid at heart and I love playing with VMs and breaking them.

Actually, the MATE interface is rather similar to Gnome 2. What is similar to Windows in a default Mint installation is the arrangement of the menu. It's not a Windows menu clone, by any stretch, but the arrangement is not so foreign as to leave a Windows user completely lost, as I suspect that Unity or Gnome 3 might do unless someone explained them. And you can reconfigure it any old way you want to (I like to put the panel on the top, for example).

I actually quite like Mint with MATE for their own merits (though right now I'm using E17 on my Mint computer and Mint netbook).