Debian is great you have the choice if you want GUI you have it if you want command line its there too. And if you have the bandwidth to download ISO's then you may as well grab a couple of boot floppies and do a network install. I'm a little biased but I think it has the best package management system there is. Since Sarge is so close to release you may as well grab it if you do to try it.

http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

Preferably any distro that stuffs in a lot of desktop goodies and applications like OpenOffice.org.

I use a distro based on FC1 and it's great! Has everything I need and more.

ok so debian seems like it is worth the shot of atleast installing and checking the system out. one small ? tho. when at that link above where should i go to get the ISO images? and reading the RC1 errata... how often does the partition bug occur during install. and if at all would this affect my windows install?

one more thing. sorry about the double post but i am kinda in a hurry here. should i go with a Daily image or one of the installs?

http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

Under netinst CD Image, pick i386 (I'm assuming this is what you have.) It will download only one CD, and then the rest is downloaded while you install. (Doesn't waste 7 discs this way). If you get stuck on something, the default normally works.

EDIT: just to let you know, Debian has no YaST equivalent, system settings are set by editing text files for the most part, if u have any troubles just post on the Debian forum after searching. It is a very stable system, with lot's of software available, but I still don't like it as much as SuSE. I guarantee you will like apt-get/Synaptic

? here.... yes i know... okies so i get this iso image and then i burn it up real nice and good. now it is net install.... so does that mean that i put it in and then install and let it d/l packages from the net kindof how i installed SuSE PE 9.1 maybe? i just used one disk and used YaST to get the packages. and about editing the text files... is it pretty much straigt forward. or can it also be done by using the desktop editor? like KDE Control Centre in Knoppix or SuSE or any KDE desktop environment for that matter heheheh. and you said that Debian can be GUI or command-line? now can this option be set at install? or how would i go about doing that?

Hey dude how can one forget to put Gentoo in the vote as well??I love Slackware, but Gentoo is great too!!!

well if i knew how to edit the poll i would do it up.. but only mods can edit it.

NO Gentoo in the list?????

OK, you burn the CD, boot from it, go into the install process, Give it the same info you do any other distro, and then it installs the base packages and reboots. Then, when you boot into it, it asks you a couple more things which are straight forward, and then apt asks you for its sources, pick a mirror close to you as debian's can get very busy and slow, Then, pick tasksel (I believe) or whatever the default is, and then tell it desktop environment, and it will download and install everything. Sorry, haven't done it in a while but those are the main points, it is actually quite easy compared to installing from a full set of debian discs.

ok... so i have heard lots and lots more about debian being fairly versatile in what the user wants. now i pose another question. well 2 atually.

1. what other benefits does Debian have as far as compiling new tarballs, space usage, newbie compatable, etc.

2. What is grand and elagant about Gentoo? i have had a few posts here asking where Gentoo was on the poll. and what does Gentoo have to offer. ?s are above. and anything else you could provide is good too.

I've started out with Mandrake. Then Redhat >> Jamd >> Debian >> Libranet >> Mandrake again >> Slackware >> SuSE. I've also tried non-Linux distributions under this time, including Solaris (nice) and FreeBSD(great), besides mini-distros as Deli-Linux and Grey Cat Linux.

I became a big fan of SuSE since I got 9.1 Pro. I did not like it at the beginning, and thought YaST was week. Although Slackware is still one of my favorites of all time, I will surely stick with SuSE for a while, long while. I've 3 boxes here running only SuSE and one of them is a Server.

I really am excited to see what Novell holds for SuSE in the future. SuSE has always been a KDE-like distribution, but since Novell also owns Ximian Desktop (that I've been trying out and it's pretty neat, but feels "broken" even under SuSE 8.2) something really nice is coming along, I bet.

Novell can push Linux into desktops much more then Redhat ever did, or ever will. And I hope they do, their distro is really good .

Debian is awesome for install software. When you first put it on, edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list

Delete everything in this file. Then add these 2 lines.

deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free

deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free

This tells apt where to download software from.

Now go to a console as root and type in

apt-get update (updates apt's lists of packages, do this every couple of days)

apt-get upgrade (upfgrades all packages to newest versions, according to lists obtained by apt-get update)

now say you want to install the browser lynx, it would be as easy as

apt-get install lynx

One thing, if you find Debian hard, try Libranet, it is based on Debian and also uses apt and has graphical utilities for changing system settings unlike Debian.

apt-get is alright. But the same could be done with YaST if you add source's to that:

yast -i lynx

apt-get upgrade is very dangerous. Can't remember how many times I end up with a broken system by doing that

megaman X what do you mean apt-get upgrade is dangerous? how so? i mean if you get it from that source things should be fine right? do you know why or how you ended up with broken boxes? and as far as ximian is concerned... under what OS or Distro can that be applied to? i am looking forward to updating from SuSE -> debian. can't wait. if some one posts me for how tomake Slack into GUI i will try that too. thanks everyone for the posts, even tho this has been posted before. the posts keep coming in. and i appreciate it.