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Always outdated, I'd say.

Psst - you can use an 'unstable' branch and always be up to date. And I think there are ones that are actually unstable, too, if you like to live on the edge.


I know I ought to use Debian - have before, and it was great - but there was a repository problem last time I did a clean install so I went with Ubuntu. Figure I'll give it another try when 8.04 comes out.

I'm no Debian expert, but I think Debian sticks to version numbers (like for instance Red Hat does) which makes it indeed stable as in "predictable", but then Red Hat does more backporting of packages from newer releases, often to increase its stability.

And sticking with older versions is actually something that I think makes Debian unstable sometimes. A recent example I stumbled upon, was a problem in the OpenISCI initiator: it didn't take me long before I found some bugs that were already solved. Another advantage of the more active backporting that Red Hat does, is that you get to benefit from some new features (like with Xen, being able to run 64-bit next to 32-bit: I'm afraid we'll have to wait for that with Debian for the next stable release? And cyrus 2.3 was released I think just before the freeze of etch, but it still has 2.2 and it seems like it will stay like that. Although during sarge I believe there was an major upgrade from mysql that I was surprised about, that was actually an example where Debian didn't stick to older versions - which is good, but also problematic in this case.
We've had serious problems with kernel images in the past too, problems with (too new) hardware that just were not solved in Debians stock kernels...)

Oh well, that said: I like Debian, I just wished it had the release cycle and freshness/packaging policy of other distributions sometimes. But it serves us really well, for some machines we pick Debian, others get Red Hat (or FreeBSD, or, or...)

Stable, Testing and Unstable means different things to Debian than other distros.

Stable: It's literally stable. Version numbers don't bump, security patches only. Great for servers and production environments. It's constantly cooked for security && stability and this cooking pays of as we see.

Testing: Your $fav_distro release is Debian testing. Version numbers bump slowly but solid and dependable with no killing security holes. Hundred days of uptime. Sometimes it's a bit outdated (a week or so) but stability pays it off. Great for non-critical / casual desktop.

Unstable: Cutting edge, massively updated but not secure as testing (not to mention stable). Has big security holes sometimes. Great for grabbing latest amarok or kernel if the current one doesn't support a thing or two, nothing more. If you are just curious, update to unstable once in every three months then wait for testing to catch up (catches in ~1 month) if your system is secured using external security mechanisms (firewalls and such).

...and don't forget: debian is not an OOB thing. You make debian what it is. Like Slack, Gentoo or Arch. (I've installed mine as etch beta-1 and it's now lenny. I've cloned it to my office PC instead of installing a fresh one and it's working flawlessly at home and office.)

Also please remember that debian is just a distro which placed itself to the higher, geeker side of the spectrum. They've made their choices and they're very good at them. I beleive that Debian vs. (*buntu, suse, mandriva, etc) comparisons are a bit apples to oranges since the secondary part has different goals than Debian-like ones (geek, technical vs. mainstream, easy to use).

I've installed mine as etch beta-1 and it's now lenny. I've cloned it to my office PC instead of installing a fresh one and it's working flawlessly at home and office.

I really like that about Debian. I've done similar stuff. My install started out as Woody, and is now Lenny, many years on. It's moved from one partition to another, one drive to another, and to a completely different machine in the meantime, as well as being cloned to an office machine sort of like you did.

It's gone from kernel 2.4 to 2.6, Xfree86 to Xorg, supermount to hal/udev/pmount, bootsplash to splashy, OSS to ALSA, GCC 2.95 to GCC 4.2 and so on.

I think it's pretty neat I haven't had to do a clean install in something over four years now. It's done great surviving new hardware, and several upgrades - and by this point it is thouroughly mine. The only thing likely to necessitate a new install at this point is a move to 64 bit.