Bravo and good luck with the bug hunt.

I'm pretty sure Ubuntu is based off of the Debian unstable & experimental branches, which means Lenny (currently testing) going stable means bloody nothing to them!

Debian is exceptionally good.

I have been using Lenny-Sid since mid last year. Now it is mostly Lenny and every upgrade was an improvement.

Now that it is finalizing into "stable", certainly from a desktop computer users point of view, I would say that it is just great to use and be productive, without issues of anxiety.

Fantastic!

Definitely the smoothest and most reliable distro I've come across

Only recently tried Debian in earnest having been a SuSE user for years. It's the best distro by far for lean, mean, dedicated server appliances under VMWare.

... if you're running it on old hardware so that the lack of the latest device drivers doesn't matter. this is why so many would-be debian fans have moved to ubuntu - debian but up to date!

ok, trolling aside, it's a testament to debian's design that so many things are based on it, knoppix (one of the first if not the first live distro), damnsmalllinux, {k,x,ed}ubuntu etc.

I used to love Debian when I was a linux nut but their geologically paced release schedule drove me away. Much kudos goes to it's rock solid stablility and lean install but seriously ice-ages have come and gone more quickly than a version of Debian.

Fire, because it's discovery coincided with the last release.

My only gripe with Debian is that sometimes updates change things in config files that I've set for a reason.

Stability wise, I've been running Lenny quite a while. I've had up times in excess of 100 days before a power cut ruined it - and that's not even the officially stable branch.

YAY!

This is why I use Debian excludively on my servers. The development cycle is rock solid.

Debian stable tends to be a little behind the curve. Software included tends to be slightly older than Fedora, for instance. Yet because of the strict and solid release cycle, it is incredibly stable.

Because of this, I would ALMOST be willing to just whap Lenny on my currently etch (well, etch and a half, I have a custom 2.6.24 kernel) main server. I say almost... Nothing's foolproof, so I will of course be testing on a sacrificial machine first...

My current employer has standardised on SuSE and I detest and despise it. Give me Debian any day.

My personal choices come down to Debian Stable for servers, Ubuntu for stable desktops. Then I tend to use Debian Testing & Unstable and Fedora for experimental boxes. My employer wouldnt listen, and caused me endless hours of work getting SuSE to work to the same standard! And don't get me started on YaST...

Okay, I'll take the bait.... For the benifit of those who genuinely agree with your comments.

The testing branch is very up-to-date (Firefox 3 is in there). Okay, it may be a couple weeks off launch, or months for less popular products, but hey, it really doesn't make a difference.

As for releasing 'versions'. They are nothing but PR campaigns, you won't suddenly notice a big difference between a system moving from 'testing - lenny' to 'stable - lenny'. Home machines shouldn't be running on 'stable' anyway (sort of).

I love it, but I still use Gentoo at home.

Installing on Debian is so easy. Once set up it's very reliable. Lot's of great How-To's on the Interweb also.

Think your correct, i.e. Ubuntu goes from testing/unstable.

Plus it will add the latest versions of packages that are important to it (latest Gnome, firefox, etc.).

Still, debian on the server is great (stable, etc.)

Debian ftw, as the kiddies say!

Ubuntu is not more up-to-date (or stable) than Debian Testing (which is what should run on most non-critical desktops). The Stable releases are rock-solid and suitable for servers and other critical machines, but a bit out of date. Choose what best suits your needs.

Geoff, "sometimes updates change things in config files that I've set for a reason.". You sure? I'm quite certain that my Debians ask me before replacing a config file that has been modified since install. Maybe your apt-get needs a bit of tweaking...

and other sites.

In the day job it my work teams intranet and outside of work in my role as IT Manager for a small radio station, it will be running one of our broadcast output loggers.

Easy to install, as easy as Ubuntu.

Also, I like it that there is only one flavour of Debian. With Ubuntu you can have server or desktop - even more decisions after settling on a distro.