I found Debian in a search, and as far as i know, it looks pretty good. Can anyone back me up on this or give me some more info on Debian? Anything will be greatly appriciated. Also, id like to know if anyone knows if wireless pci works good with it. i have a netgear ma401 for my laptop and a netgear ma311 for my desktop. Thanks a bunch.---THE LINUX HIPPY

www.debian.org

and if you can down load knoppix give it a try. Debian based.

http://www.knoppix.net/

is debian any good?! chyah!

there are two things i like about debian that move it up and above mandrake, etc...
1. it is geeky... you have to know some commands and use the console.. you have to learn linux!
2. apt-get (debian site and unofficial sites) which makes installing and upgrading a breeze.
**but, don't go to the debian site and start posting questions such as "my mouse doesn't work" or you will get the obligatory RTFM... these guys are too busy for anything but development: ie; making debian great.
always come to a forum such as this for questions.

i have not used wireless at all yet (slowly saving pennies for all the goodies i DESIRE), so i can't help you there, sorry.

lsh,

Debian is the distro probably most closely associated with GNU.
It's very easy to maintain once you have it installed. There's no company associated with it, so whatever you get is thanks to debian hackers. Some think of it as the "purist's distro".

Regarding your question about support for your particular wireless pci card: Linux is Linux. A distro such as Redhat might support it out-of-the-box (that is to say, the driver might already be compiled into/along with the stock (and possibly rather large) RH kernel). With Debian, it may or may not be -- but it's not too too much trouble to configure and build your own kernel.

You might head over to www.osnews.com and search for "debian" there. Also look in their Linux forum.

If you have used mandrake or red hat. Debian is one up.

It uses a text install rather than mandrake, red hat, suse.... graphical install.

I have used linux since mandrake 6.1, and it used a text installer, so it does not bother me.

Installing packages is a simple as apt-get install package_name.

You can also update all of your packages with one command too.

Maybe because it's called Debian GNU/Linux?

Yeah Debian is pretty kickbutt. I'm looking forward to the stable of Debian GNU/Hurd.

I also recommend checking out Knoppix, posted above...

It runs without installing, and there is a good chance all of your hardware will work right away.

This will give you a chance to check out Debian and see if it works with your hardware while only downloading one CD. You can also install from the Knoppix CD.

Hope it helps...