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I love Debian. But I wish they had a stable version released more often.



You could try getting on the testing release which (as far as I can tell) is still ten times as stable as Ubuntu while still getting frequent updates. Testing is the best of both worlds IMO (stability <-> freshness)


My only problem is compiling nvidia drivers on the testing default kernel right now. At least there was a bug keeping it from compiling with dkms.


When was the last time you used Debian?

I'm using arch (rolling distro) as my main OS. I do EVERYTHING on it.


I've gotten a lot of mileage out of Arch too, though I won't use it on a server anymore.

The rolling release schedule is too much for me to manage there.. but for my daily-driven workstation, I find it to be a fantastic OS.


Ubuntu is basically debian unstable + ubuntu crap.


And ironically Debian packages are more bleeding edges.


Unstable is pretty dang stable.


Halfway between Stable releases I switch to Testing. It helps keep my software versions fresh with upstream releases.


If I understand it right, Unstable doesn't get security fixes:

http://www.debian.org/security/faq#unstable

And Testing doesn't get fixes for contrib and non-free:

http://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing


It means that unstable isn't specifically tested for security, but security fixes will go to unstable first, before they propagate to testing.


Thanks for the clarification but reading the FAQ again for both Unstable and Testing in the context of your comment I'm still struggling to compare it to how Ubuntu gets security fixes for example.

I checked the security site listed in the Testing area in the Debian FAQ and don't see the recent SSH fix or the recent Linux kernel fix.

http://www.debian.org/security/

I do see them on the Ubuntu site:

http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/


http://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php There, fixed :)


Why?




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