For me, Debian Testing is more stable than Stable

In response to my last entry on bug reports in Debian, and the distro's propensity to offer workarounds in the messages that follow bug reports without coming right out and saying whether or not the bug is going to be "fixed" (if it's not a bug, it must be a "feature," no?), a discussion started on LXer about whether you should run Stable (currently Etch) or Testing (Lenny).

My point of view is basically that if Etch works for you, it's stable all right. But if things aren't working quite right for your hardware in Debian's Stable release, you might want to start looking elsewhere. Stable isn't going to start sprouting features out of its nether regions just because it doesn't work for you.

Only in Lenny -- with its newer GNOME tools -- did Debian work well on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450). And Lenny runs better on all my other boxes, too. I haven't had to turn back to Etch on any of my computers to get the best functionality I can out of Debian.

With Ubuntu, not so much. On my main test box, 8.04 is running, but not as well as 6.06 and 7.04. If both Etch and Lenny didn't do so well on this VIA C3 Samuel-based box, I'd probably be running Ubuntu 6.06 LTS for the next year and so of its life before Canonical ends support for it.

Besides running well once installed, for me Debian's installer has never failed me. With one disc, I can install a barebones system, an Xfce, KDE or GNOME desktop, a server, or anything in between with the use of apt/Aptitude/Synaptic.

I read in the now-out-of-date "The Debian System" about some Debian-produces spins of the distro aimed at office use, as well as other segments of the user base, such audio fanatics, kids and others. I'll have to look back again for specifics, but to get to my point, I see no such distros from Debian today -- and I've said all along that Debian could -- and should -- produce an official live CD that has a package mix much like Ubuntu's and installs in pretty much the same way. But it would be Debian, not Ubuntu, and that would mean more speed, greater stability ... and just more Debiany. If "Debiany" is not a word, I'd like to create it right now.

I'm not saying I won't continue to run other distros. I'd like to try Slackware with Dropline GNOME (I like GNOME -- sue me, fanboys), but right here, right now, Debian is what does it for me.