Thanks for all the repsonses guys.
Got it - I had chosen US as the lang at the CD boot, but the routine installed the German keymap-finally found the setting for that!
New problem: the LAN is failing because somehow a second eth device was found - I only have one and the settings I put in for it are still correct!
EDIT! A reboot solved the problem. So far, this is the easiest to use distro I've found in terms of installation; need to play with it a bit, try to install some things myself the linux way instead of micosoft or Amiga way to see if linux+mgerics=good fit.
Now, I know I need to RTFM, but anyone know how to tweak MTU, etc on the eth interfaces? This is a 600 mHz machine, and my ol' A4k with 28 mHx Warp Engine+IBrowse loads pages almost twice as fast. Unless there is some other tweak in linux for speedier page rendering...