[luau] upgrading

[Andrew Keyes]

 I have a four year old 550MHz machine which had a 10GB hard drive.  I 
just purchased a new 80GB drive and am looking for recommendations on 
how to make the most of it.  I have RedHat but having used a Debian 
system this summer I found apt-get a lot more effective and fun than 
rpmfind etc.   I've used Unix boxes for a long time so I feel 
comfortable using Debian but have never used Mandrake which people on 
the list seem to like.  I'm looking for a distro that's easy to 
maintain, easy to upgrade and people make lots of packages for, which 
might be better?
 Secondly should I download and make some CDs first and then do an 
install, are the CD images on the videl server somewhere?  Or as was 
noted once, I'm Speakeasy member and they have a great site which helped 
me a bit, although it doesn't seem like paying them $10 a month gets me 
any special download priveleges.  I also need Windows as well, and so 
was wondering for GRUB is still the best boot manger for a dual or 
triple boot system.  Finally I was wondering about making extended 
partitions,  does linux care if the swap partition is a main partition 
or extended? what about other partitions?
 If Warren or who ever runs the luau site is interested I can take the 
answers and make an HTML page to post on this sort of decision making.

Thanks,
Andrew
Consultant (ie looking for work)