Well, I'm a complete newbie, and would like to start off with learning linux
But I know from experience I learn best by following instructions and then working backwards, trying to understand each and every part

I'd like to install the Debian package, but I realize that might be quite hard, so I'm willing to "settle" with RedHat 9.

However, following the tutorials in these forums, none of them appeared to be able to get me going 100%..

Debian got close, but I'd like a complete and working tutorial..
I love how Debian has it's own webmin theme :p

Oh.. I have a linode 64

Gentoo is much easier to learn than either redhat or debian as a result of the help available at http://forums.gentoo.org.



What problems are you having?

-Mike

Erm, not really.

Redhat/Fedora has support from: Massive online RPM repositories, a large online forum, and a nice IRC chatroom

Debian has support from: the biggest support mailing list ever, all the packages easily downloadable online (if apt wasn't enough), a hefty selection of back ported packages. (and a nice IRC chatroom as well)

Not to mention the universal help availible for all distros and such.

Bill Clinton[/url]

I had Debian running till I had to add in IMAP/POP3 :p
Then I switched to Fedora Core 1 - worked just fine, completely configured and running

I agree with myrealbox on this one. When I tried learning other distros, there was plenty of information available, but it was all in different places. It can be confusing when you have 20 different ways to do the same task... everyone has their own way of doing things.

Everything you need to know about Gentoo is on their website and forums. They have official documentation that covers everything from system installation to setting up email/web servers. When you run into problems, search the forums. Chances are, someone has already had the same problem.