Hey everyone,
How is Debian compared to other distos? I'm a relatively new user. I've used RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSe each from about version 6 or 7 until the most recent. I really like Yast2 in Suse to set up any of my hardware and such. However, I only really got into Linux when I tried out Ximian Desktop which it appears is unavailable for Debian. My main concern is installing programs and such to debian. I really dislike compiling myself, but I also dislike RPMs when they continuously give me dependency errors and ask for CDs I don't have. I like the red carpet feature of Ximian which will install everything you need. Does Debian sound like something I should try? I know my way around linux but rely a lot on auto detection of hardware and so on, so would like a distro that I don't need to set everything up myself. Thanks for the advice.

Lee

if you don't want to worry about compile you apps then debian has apt. all you have to do is, as root in the command line, type
if you don't know the correct app name then you can go to debian.org and look in the packages section. if you want somewhat up-to-date stuff then you will have to change your /etc/apt/sources.list to say testing or unstable (which ever you want) and then run apt again to get the app. it figures out all of the dependencies for you and you only have to wait for the system to download and install itself.

Yes.

Hmm you can try installing the Debian-based distros like Libranet, Knoppix, Mepis. I never had a problem getting Debian to detect my hardware when installing. But use this article to help you if you want to install Debian without trouble "The Very Verbose Debian Installation Walkthrough".

Libranet is better (faster, more comprehensive, less buggy) than Mandrake. However, make sure you know your partition names when you are installing, if you plan to keep any of your partitions (e.g. /home).