In fact debian unstable is "more stable" and less buggy than any 'buntu release. It depends on what you define as stability - if you mix the meaning of stability with bugginess as many do, then you've maybe misinterpreted the meaning. Stability actually refers to how prone a distro or piece of software is to change. Debian unstable changes a lot and testing nearly as much - you might get 30+ updated packages a day in some cases (it depends on what you have installed), whereas stable only gets security patching (usually no new versions of software just bug fixes).

Debian operates on a roughly two year release cycle - but there's no deadline. It's released when it's ready. But users who find their feet with stable are not constrained as they can upgrade to testing/unstable and keep up to date (debian distribution upgrades actually work as well).

This is in contrast to 'buntu who release what is essentially a modified debian unstable to deadline every 6 months - whether it's ready or not. The user base then do much of the testing (whether they want to or not).

@Leeky, caravel

Reading your posts somewhat convinced me to try Linux Mint Debian, just downloaded it yesterday.

Having Mandriva as my first taste of Linux, and using Puppy when repairing non-bootable Windows, 'bout time I try Linux Mint Debian. Learn something new

open a terminal in the guest and post output of:

Code:

glxinfo | grep render

It's using software rendering.

Post outputs

Code:

grep EE /var/log/Xorg.0.log
grep WW /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Code:

apt-cache policy libgl1-mesa-dri

i'm a long time linux user, started with ubuntu 8 or so, just recently got into different distrubutions. first i switched straight to debian squeeze, I absolutely LOVED it, got it all configured and had it running all smooth and sexy for like a week.
Then X got an upgrade which broke my nvidia drivers (switching to nouveau was not an option) i tried to revert to my old version of X but kept getting weird issues after that. i then decided to poke around and find a new distro.

I used PCLinuxOS for awhile, but found it horrendously bloated and had very poor support, their forums were nearly dead and google results hardly found any info on pclos. So, on to a new distro

thus Arch enters, and let me say i am impressed. Arch is rock solid and a VERY core linux distro, i've got all my hardware configured and am now on to configuring my WMFS. it uses the "Pacman package manager" similar to apt-get for those debian users out there (Install a package pacman -S foo) and it also includes the painstakingly maintained "AUR" package repository which has much of the software and hardware drivers/firmware all users need.

Another thing arch likes to boast is their philosophy they follow the KISS (keep it simple stupid!) idea really close and believe simplicity is elegant and essentially what most linux users strive for.

The main thing i love about Arch is their documentation, it's EXTREMELY well maintained, most everything you need to find can be located on their wiki and forum response time is roughly under 30 minutes.

Also, Arch is very lightweight I believe my entire root partition is currently under 1gb with a max of 15gb, incredibly fast, and elegant.

If you're sick and tired of your generic ubuntu i recommend giving it a try. hell run it in a VM for awhile, guarantee it will become your distro of choice soon!

nice words, tehbanz

yes, i share your enthusiasm for arch - i have built a couple of nice arch setups.

it is a lot of fun to be able to custom build a system almost from the ground up. and the arch community is very active and supportive - the great documentation and repos. pacman makes it super easy to install new components.

i got off to a bad start with arch, though. because the arch installer is quite "stripped down" and no gui of course - you have to know what you are doing. partition names used by the installer were different from what i expected and the worst happened - the old "write over existing partitions" trick.

anyway i was able to recover most of the material, put it down to experience (everyone has to go through it once, right?) and arch and i went to build a nice friendship

well i hope i have learned now!

actually, as a result of such disasters (and as you say, they can just be caused by tiredness or momentary loss of concentration/judgenment) i sometimes now physically disconnect my drives with valuable data before installing a new OS. then integrate them back into the boot system later.

it seems to me that the picture is something like this - only a small 'plateau'

I assume that was while squeeze was still testing? The stable branch does not get updated versions of packages, which is why it doesn't break.

It also very much depends on how you installed proprietary drivers. If you did it the "debian way" - installed from the repos - it will get updated along with xorg. If you installed it from the "nvidia_installer_name.run" shell script then you do need to reinstall it almost every time there is an xorg update or kernel update.

+1

It's a case if "you break it, you get to keep both pieces" (an old one, but a good one).

I've also messed up partitioning on a few occasions, "we've all been there" indeed...

a grueling process. what software did you use for the recovery? (note the underlying fear that it may happen again)

that's the great thing about debian - you can choose whether you want to live safely or 'on the edge'

indeed

good to know, but hoping i will never need it!

Gday HiDDeNMisT,

I would recommend Mandriva for someone new to Linux. They have both a free version and a very cheap paid version which includes some commercial software. They even have a mobile version which is run off a USB key. Also you can plug into Penguin Liberation Front to get more packages which are not found in the base distribution.