Hello everyone!
I first installed Linux more then half year ago.
Before I will choose my main distro I want to try out all major linux distros.
I already tried SuSE(old), Mandrake, RedHat, Slackware and Vector.
Slack is perhabs the best one for me. But before I make my chose I still want
to try out Gentoo and Debian. So can you plz tel me what Debian is good for
and what's the main differences between Debian and Slack/Red Hat?
Thanks

Debian is one of the old guard (the other being Slack) of Linux. It has everything the other distros have. The best thing about Debian is the 'apt-get' package installer which is very easy to use. If I want the lastest and greatest packages I simply type 'apt-get dist-upgrade -u'. Apt-get resolves all the dependencies horrors of RPM (used by Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake and many more). Slackware is a nice solid distro but you have to compile every application or use pkgtool which does not have the sheer volume of apps that Debian has. Slack also lacked a decent upgrade tool until recently. Gentoo is great if you have dual 2.4 ghz processors and like to spend your days compiling everything.
I started on RH, tried Mandrake, Gentoo and Slackware. Debian is my choice and I recommend it to anyone who is considering linux. Suse is the only commercial distro I never tried.

Why don't you install knoppix that makes debian easy, really easy and fast to install?

First you can try it from cd ( it's a live cd ), then if you like it you can install it, and you can use apt.

Also it features already almost everything from the "unstable" ( not that unstable as mandrake imo, but as far as i have used it it seems very stable ), so with up-to-date packages.

Last I checked, the knoppix hard drive install sucked horribly. I strongly recommend against using knoppix to install Debian.

For what can i tell, i have installed knopils 0.4 ( moreless knoppix 3.3 in italian ). You have to install everything at first, but after you have a quite well configured debian unstable installation.

I had debian 3.0 in the past and i have abandoned it for knopils 0.4. With mydialup it's impossible to upgrade it to unstable, and my printer and my camera didn't work with 3.0.

Also it takes moreless 1 hour ( little configuration included ) instead of several days of tweaking and adjusting ( from bash colors to everything ).