I''m using redhat 8.0, but I''m interested in trying out other distributions. I am running on a 56k here, so downloading the full 8 ISOs for debian isnt going to work, nor the 4 for the full slackware. First: what do I need to download to be able to install debian with very basic functionality (and XF86 and gnome)? And what for slackware? What''s the best way to go about downloading these?

"There is no dark side of the moon really,
As a matter of fact, its all dark."

With Debian, you don''t need to have a bunch of ISOs.
I installed all of my Debian machines with a floppy.
Debian has apt which allows you to install from the network on demand.

Let''s say you install your base system. You want an editor. The base install won''t have nano.
So with root access, you do:
apt-get install nano

And it grabs all of the dependencies with it.
Also, security updates are done that way too.
apt-get update // To grab updated packages
apt-get upgrade // To install those, and remove older packages


It might be frustrating if you tend to expect that everything exists out of the box, but that is how Debian works. Technically apt could point to some CDROMs, but the network install is nice. Maybe not for a 56k connection though, but if you don''t mind waiting for a few hours...