
I considered reviewing Debian for this article. I downloaded a copy of Debian 3.0r2, making sure to get the disk with the 2.4 kernel. Everything you've heard about Debian being difficult to install? It's not totally true, but it's pretty close. I really wanted to try Debian, though, if only to use the vaunted apt-get system. I'd tried apt-rpm on a previous Red Hat installation, and it was great. Since Debian was turning out to be too difficult to put together, I decided to look for a debian-based distro.
I have tried that before, and it works quite well on most machines. However, the Dell Inspiron 5150 is one of a very few machines Knoppix and it's derivatives refuse to run on. It's not just me: take a look at the Knoopix forums.