First of all Rony - my sympathies are with you. I remember it took me 6 months to get a wav sound out of my first RH5 installation. You'll get there eventually :-)
Now since one year, I have tried out many linux distros in order to find the ideal one that can do everything or atlest do the normal stuff thats done in the 'other' popular OS ;)
IMO there is actually not so much of a difference in terms of various *distributions* - underneath they are quite similar in ability. I mean you would be running the same software (mplayer / xine / xmms) irrespective of which distro you use. Then there is the same Linux kernel - the same libc and the same Xserver.
The difference is only in the installation procedure (what get's installed by default? / what works out of the box?). If you are supplying to other people - you have to spend time on: EITHER Learning how to make each distro work OR Learn atleast one distro in/out and stick to it!!
Generally speaking, if you are installing a software from binary packages, it is better to install more packages initially (actually as much as you can fit in) in order to avoid the kind of dependency problems that you have mentioned. You can always weed out the rubbish later. Much more difficult to get a working system from a minimal installation.
Ofcourse the most dependable way of getting any software to work properly is compiling it from source - obviously won't work for your problem since u're actually supplying to others.
The point is that how much time does one have to spend on a linux system to get it running properly?
The answer is: it depends upon how much time you have already spent in the past. As you gain proficieny seemingly difficult tasks will become easy.
Those who say "Linux is easy" have probably not spent enough time using it or they have had an unusually stroke of luck with it. I for one am infamous for hardware conflicts - nothing ever works out of the box for me :-( Every new piece of h/w I purchase comes with many sleepless nights...
Anyway, I suggest you invest time in creating one perfect setup - and get your basics right. Thereafter all distro's have some kinda automated installation tool which can replicate a specified setup. (FAI for Debian, kickstart for RedHat, autoyast and alice for SuSE, list goes on...). Eventually you will end-up with your very own *mini* distribution spec (hurrah for Rony-Linux - lol)
- farazs