hello all, i doubt you remember me, i asked wether i should get Linux donkey's years back, well, i forgot

anyways, i'm once again intrested in getting it, i'm a programmer, and want to develop my skills further, i do mainly web design and small open source app's, i'm intrested in getting Linux simply because: Trying to program, within Windows, is like trying to dance, in a straight jacket.

The web generally runs off of Unix, so getting a form of Unix to develop my skills only makes sense, at the moment i'm looking into getting Debain, simply for stability reasons...

so, my quistions are as follows:

1. Were can i find Debain?

2. Can one of you guide me in installing it?

3. Can you suggest me some good reading material (e-books or otherwise)

4. Is their a good IRC channel i can go-to for help?

5. Is their a large learning curve involved with learning Linux / learning to run it?

Regards,
Martin

www.linuxiso.org

For the rest, linuxquestions!

Thanks

i went there and found a link here: http://www.debian.org (oops i'd been spelling it Debain rather than Debian )

now, what of my other quistions?

download the debian, first of all and then install it.

Installation manual: http://www.debian.org/releases/stabl...nstall.en.html
For help, use thid site

Question 5. It depends on your experience with computers and Unix systems. If you have no knowledge of Unix, many things may be different. Experiance with computer helps (when you know what's a partition, serial port and so on).
There's different learing curve depending which distro you choose. You've choosen Debian, so it looks 's already done for you. But: distros like Debian, Slackware, Gentoo make you learn fast, in short time (huge "shock effect") when Mandrake, RedHat, SuSE and oters make the beginning easier, but you don't learn that much as with the firet group (leter you can learn the same but it requires you to dig deeper).

thank you all for your reply's, i'm not going to download Debian yet, that's a mission for my new 'puter: X-Lian-Li.Is_B(l)ack

it's a self build, and as such, i dutufully had to give it a weird name

one quistion more: Does my hardware significantly affect what i intend to do? is some hardware rubbish for Linux? etc etc

This is my rough setup:

Abit NF7-S
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (yes i'm overclocking it - obviously )
Geforce FX5900
2*80Gb HDDs
512Mb PC3200 Kingston RAM
Zalman Flower Cooler (ooh, silence )

Regards,
ICEMANII

I've been told by a friend that 'Mandrake pawns Debian' is this true?

Your machine will work with Linux nicely. If you want accelerated graphics (for games etc) you'll need to download driver from nvidia's site (but it'll run without it, simply - without acceleration).

There's no answer for your question. It simply depends on the person. You don't know before you try. It's also common to switch distros until you find the one that suits you most. You can browse the Linux-Distribution forum and you'll find a number of 'which distro is best' threads. No agreement.
About MDK and Deb - my opinion from last post is still true. There are two groupd for two types of personalities. The choice is yours.
BTW You can try both MDK and Debian without installing. MDK has MandrakeMove, when Knoppix is based on Debian.

good irc channel is #ca-uug
on server irc.cyberarmy.net

on there now