On Debian-based distros, issue the command "sudo apt-get install build-essential" to install gcc etc.
Under Ubuntu, "sudo update-rc.d -f gdm remove" will disable the display manager (you'll need to restart afterwards). Not sure if that works on Debian, worth a shot though...the other distros may have other ways of disabling the display manager (if you're running Gnome on all of them, it will be "gdm"). You should be able to manually start the Gui from the commandline if needed by running "startx".
Hey, thanks for the info Armando.
I've been buried in Debian for the past 2+ days.
Boy, was it a hassle.
Fedora, Mint and Ubuntu completely installed and updated properly and in a very short time.
Got all the GNU tools and everything I will (n)ever need.
Debian was a very different story.
Getting the updates and all the GNU stuff that I needed was really like pulling teeth.
I read and reread the specific docs and googled, but, nothing was working.
I mean, what took 10 minutes to do in each of the other three, was taking me days to figure out on debian.
Being a complete noob to debian and very little helpful information from the debian forum
(jerks) guys, finally this morning I got it all done.
You know, when you spend 2 days doing google searches, reading and re-reading the docs (and nothing makes any sense) and you search forum posts, all before you post a question in a forum and a guy's reply is "STFW" and "RTFM", (Search The F*ing Web) and (Read The F*ing Manual), that kind of leaves a bad taste.
I once thought Forums and User Groups were there for the purpose of aiding in the persuit of finding solutions.
Steve