Debian, Knoppix, and other varients

[Krikket <krikket@gothpoodle.com>]

I'm fairly new to the world of Debian, and it's varients.  To get to the
point where I'm at, I've been playing around and installed a number of
distributions.  (SuSE, Fedora Core 1, Red Hat 9, Debian, Knoppix, Gentoo,
Mandrake, FreeBSD, and probably one or two others that I'm forgetting.)
I've been using Unix derivitives since 1988 or so, although usually as a
user, not as an admin.

This recent thread on Knoppix took me by surprise.  From my point of view,
it has out-performed the other Linuxes in one way or another.  (My problem
with the standard Debian install is with configuring the kernel.  At this
point, I just don't get it.  I need to learn a lot more before I can do
that part on my own.)  The rest of it, no problem.  I *did* do a Gentoo
install, including the bootstrap process.  I just cheated with the kernel,
and used the "genkernel" feature.  Please note, that this does not mean
that I'm "stupid user", but rather that I'm still learning.

Besides, I don't see why I should have to go through hell just to get a
system running.  I want something that's simple to use.  Enough so, that I
can have confidence in reccomending it to my friends.  (In this case,
coworkers who are also in the technical-support department of my company.)
We want something that just works.  We have a technical clue, but don't
feel that you should be required to be a "real programmer" to install an
OS.  (See the Jargon file, if needed.)

What took me by surprise, when I started poking around with Knoppix is
that it uses a number of different branches off the tree.  To get gnome
running, I had to use *experimental*.  But it is running, and without a
problem.  (Although not enough time has passed for me to determine how
truly stable it is.  Only a few days so far.)

But as there are some pretty strong opinions on this subject.  So I figure
rather than just listen to people shit-can/defend my recent choice, I'd
ask for some input from those who have been slamming Knoppix.

What would you suggest as an alternative?  I've heard calls for Morphix,
but that's a derivitive of Knoppix.

Lindows has horrible defaults.  (Everything is run as root.)

LibraNet looks good, but I don't want to pony up some cash until I know
which branch it's based on.  Similar difficulties with Mepis and Xandros.

What am I looking for in my OS?  Ease of use, and then stability.  I can
deal with some unstability on my desktop, but it's less acceptable on my
server.  So the equations are probably reversed for the server.

So, if we take it as a given that Knoppix is so evil, what do people
reccomend?

Krikket