I don't intend this post to cause one of the oh-so-frequent linux vs. BSD flamewars. If you don't think you can answer the questions that follow this out personal prejudice, then please don't post. If your opinion happens to apply to my questions. Please feel free to share it. There, warning all done; on to the questions:

I have a family comprised of not-so-computer inclined people (a mother, father, and younger sister to be more precise)*

My question is: What is the lowest maintenance distro out of all the Linux and BSD distro's out there? I need something that I can install on my family's machines that's rock solid stable (no test packages, only the tried and true most rock solid sources and binaries), that can do CUPS based network printing, samba, and a few other "home network" type services with the absolute minimum of day to day glitches. I am perfectly willing to do quite a bit of manual configuration on each machine, but I need something that is "set and forget." after these machines are up, I want to get back to playing with more experimental/testing stuff on my own machine, and leave my family to its own devices (with the exception of upgrades, which I'll perform for them).

To sum up the main points:

**Must be rock solid stable
**Must be "set-and-forget"
**Out-of-date packages is not an issue
**willing to do lots of manual config (only once or twice though. I need set and forget)


*Side note: I do not live in my parent's basement. I'm just not old enough to have moved out yet (I'm 15 years of age).

How much "setting" are you willing to do before the forgetting? Maybe you should use Slackware or Gentoo. Those, as I understand it, are built from the ground up and are "rock solid," as you say.

Why did you triple post this? You certainly agreed to our rules when registering, cause if you didn't, you couldn't have clicked ok to continue registering....

http://www.linuxquestions.org/rules.php