Gentoo vs. Debian vs. ???

[palsyboy]

I need to find a distro to use for my dad's machine. He's been running SuSE 9.1, but I've never been able to get his wireless card (a PrismGT chipset) working, and, naturally, his ATI 9800SE mocks me when I ask it to enable 3D acceleration. Especially because of his wireless problem, I have two computers stuck in my cramped room to plug into my router, which is inconvenient for both of us.

So naturally, I want to switch distros for the sake of getting his WLAN and video card running. The only complication is his SATA HDD. I'm competent enough at this point to get Gentoo running on his machine with minimal snags, but the problem I forsee with Gentoo is that I'll have to constantly administer it. I'll need to emerge sync and emerge -u world once or twice a week to keep from having a hoard of etc-updates to sort through. And especially once I'm out of the house, I don't want to have to remote administer just to keep everything up-to-date. I mean, sure, he can run the box without doing a regular emerge sync and emerge -u world, but when it comes time to occasionally do so, I don't want to be stuck with fifty configuration files to update.

So I'd like to use Debian, which requires far less maintenance. The problem is, after googling around, the only way I've found to install to his SATA drive is to install to an IDE HDD and then to transfer the data over to the SATA drive once SATA support has been compiled into the kernel.

Is there any simpler way to install Debian directly to SATA? Or is there another distro I should check out (not Slackware, please, as choosing a kernel there alone requires far too much effort and precision for my tastes/abilities)? Or perhaps I'm suffering from misconceptions about Gentoo.

I would greatly appreciate some insight and advice into this matter, as I want my father to be a happy Linux user.

[Jata]

Why not give Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.org/) a try. I've not tried it myself but from what I've heard it's pretty up to date. Could be the best of both worlds.

There's this too: Link (http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=134612)

[retsaw]

Try reading the debian installation instructions. There is a part which explains how to install from within another distro. If you already have a distro already installed you can use that to install debian, or you could boot Knoppix and install from there.

Any distro with a kernel =>2.4.27 or a 2.6 kernel should support SATA.

[GigaShadow]

Palsyboy: I am running Ubuntu and have had little to no difficulties...it is a most excellent Distro. For a slightly more challenging experience, SourceMage is also a lot fun, and quite stable. Being Debian based, Ubuntu has all of the attributes of Debian plus a lot more of it's own. I have never tried Gentoo, but for totally compiled Distro I just love SourceMage.

G :D

[palsyboy]

I'm downloading the Ubuntu install CD right now. Thanks for the advice, Jata and GigaShadow. I'll let you know how it goes.

As for SourceMage, I'll steer away from that for my dad's computer - I just want something that'll work with a minimal amount of BS. :)

Thanks for pointing out installation via Knoppix, etc., retsaw. I may end up doing so if Ubuntu doesn't work.

[blobaugh]

what do you mean gentoo takes alot of work to maintain? you never have to do an emerge sync or emerge -uD world if you don't want too. emerge sync updates you list of programs and emerge -uD world updates all the progs at once. If you dad never needs anything new you never have to do that. It would be just like running a packaged distro that doesn't have update utils. And if you are worried about emerge sync and emerge -uD world just make a cron job then you never have to mess with it

[palsyboy]

The main reason I'd like to keep it up-to-date is because of security patches, which I'm assuming come via updating the portage tree and applications. Or am I wrong (quite possibly)?

As for making a cron job, how easy is that to do considering the need (?) to run etc-update after updating everything? How would I set it to update certain files and not others? Or rather, how would i plan ahead to know which ones I'll want updated and which ones I won't?

Thanks for the input.

[palsyboy]

Wow. That's all I can say. Wow. I installed Ubuntu in about forty-five minutes, including time to download apps. It was almost insultingly easy.

[ruwach]

Good on ya,
i use Arch myself, but after using debian for a year. Ub should do you great.

[rbrimhall]

Originally posted by palsyboy
Wow. That's all I can say. Wow. I installed Ubuntu in about forty-five minutes, including time to download apps. It was almost insultingly easy.

I've been insulted by ubuntu for the past couple of weeks and loving every minute of it ;) I think it is an excellent choice for what you need it for...