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This is a critical review of Debian 3.0, but I want to say right from the start that I'm not trying to bait anyone. However I feel that reviewers often root for Debian as the open-source underdog, and give it marks which it doesn't deserve. If RedHat 8.0 came out with installation software like Debian 3.0 it would be savaged. I think it's time for an honest review, to spur the Debian developers into making the best possible distribution. I really want Debian to succeed. I want to use it daily, and recommend it to my friends. But I can't do that right now and I think it's important people understand why." Read the review and its (already long) discussion at DebianPlanet.
One of the major advantages of Debian is that keep a consistent set of packages for all architectures they support. Obviously you're not going to get Wine or DosEmu on non-x86 architectures, but for almost every package in Debian it's going to be identical across architectures. I think they currently support about 11 different architectures.
Personally, I use Debian because I can just type apt-get install random-package and it works. I just got tired of fighting with getting everything working. I'll sacrifice being bleeding edge if that means its a lot more likely to work.