Installing Debian today! What common mistakes will I make?

[giant_toaster]

OK, read everything on the internet on the topic (well, as much as I could!) and am getting ready to install Debian when my new harddrive arrives tommorow.

What am I likely to do wrong? Are there any common mistakes that I can easily avoid etc?

Also, do I get an obvious choice over whether I install KDE or GNOME? How do I choose KDE? All screenshots of Debian I have seen use GNOME. I have used GNOME with Ubuntu, and didn't really like it! If it is too hard, I can just get used to living with it though!

Currently I am ndiswrapper-ing my windows drivers for networking. On a hard disk install (as opposed to the live-cds), will it 'remember' to do this when I boot it up, or will I have to enter this information manually each time? How can I create a script to set this up on startup? It's annoying having to remember my 256 bit WEP key on every boot!

Just in case it matters:

Pentium 4
Creative 5.1 Soundcard
ndiswrapper-able wireless drivers
Intel Integrated Graphics
... etc

I will wait to hear from this thread before installing I think, I have to uni work as well... don't want to spend all week installing Debian n-times to correct stupid mistakes!

Thanks for all your help, I have gone from zero to linux in about 2 months! (Almost 5 mins...)


Rich

[giant_toaster]

Hmmm my hard drive still hasn't arrived...

I am now considering Gentoo as an alternative to Debian, it seems a lot harder to install, but seems a lot more up to date etc...

Any comments?