so here is my situation- I am a linux newbie who initially wants to use a machine for the rather mundane habits of:
1.ripping and burning cds
2.playing various media files off of a fat32 formatted drive (mostly .mp3, some divx .avi, some .mpg)
3.web browsing
4.basic word processing

I've used jigdo to get and burn all 7 debian woody 3.0 rev1 images, and I've had success with the minimal install, except that I don't know what I'm doing well enough to get my LAN connection configured or to get xwindows up and running. What I would like to do is skip tasksel and dselect and instead apt-get just the packages i need to do what i want (as listed above). I figure when I'm comfortable with these things I'll be ready to start exploring the wide, wide world of linux/GNU. Also, i'd like to be able to do as much as i can from the command line, just because it seems simpler (and, i suppose, cooler) that way, but i would definitely like to get some kind of desktop up and running at some point.


So- I would appreciate any suggestions as to what packages i should install from a minimal debian system to be able to do the things listed above. As far as configuring my LAN and xwindows goes, I'll most likely troll around the forums and doc pages some more, but any brutally simple insights in those areas would also be nice.

thank you much...


p.s.- this is probably a lazy post, as i'm sure documentation exists for all the stuff i want, but i must admit that alot of howto's and man pages are intimidating, and i'd like to hear peoples opinions on what packages are best.
p.p.s.-
I've got:
video- RIVA TNT2 VANTA 16MB
LAN- Realtek RTL8139 (A) PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter
sound- Creative SB Live! Basic (WDM)

I usually just select the 'desktop environment' and 'C and C++' tasks from tasksel when originally installing Debian. Then I apt-get the rest.