I must say yesterday I got so irriated with something ubuntu had did and it got to the point where they try to make something so simple it can actually make something more complicated for somebody with Linux Experience.

I've used slackware, OpenSuse, CentOS, Fedora, and a few other distros.

All though I find slackware attractive I don't really like keeping track of all my depencies. Its a great distro.

So I decided to make a change. I used to say how much I hate the debian ways but I've decided to install debian on my Desktop started configuring it. The first thing I find it is far more stable running than other distros. I seems faster. But that could be that its not bloated when you do a install. I pretty much install off the First CD and added things I want and so far its great.

The only thing I hate about it is that they don't pack firefox as I can tell. They use their iceweasel. Really nothing wrong with the broswer except some sites don't recognize it and tell you to get firefox/chroom/IE, etc.

Other than that my video cards run smooth with the driver from Nvidia installed and it smooths.

So all though CentOS is still my choice for running web servers I think I'm going to make debian my based Desktop for my Office when I open it soon.

Give it up for debian for their solid work.

It is a good distro, being the basis for approximately 300 other distros says alot to me, and you are right it is stable. Even Debian Testing and Unstable are more stable than many other (Ubuntu etc) distros. Once you know your way around it isn;t hard to work out how to add things.

With regards to Iceweasel Vs Firefox, you can add a User Agent and make it show Firefox while still using Iceweasel. I've never had any trouble with any site since doing that.

Iceweasel already has Firefox in the useragent, no need to add or change anything.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:10.0.3) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.3 Iceweasel/10.0.3

All of the add-ons for Firefox work with Iceweasel.

For more info see:
Iceweasel IS Firefox - http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=73796

As far as stability goes you should remember that Debian stable (Squeeze) was what Ubuntu 10.04 was based on.

Ubuntu bases their LTS versions on Debian testing and Squeeze was testing then. 12.04 is based on Debian Wheezy.

Their regular releases (non LTS) are all based on Debian Sid (always unstable).

Many other distros are based on Debian testing for its stability. Linux Mint Debian Addition is one of those.

When you install Debian stable it is by Debians definition of stable. This is slightly higher than most other distros idea of what stable means.

As for Iceweasel take a look at this;
That is from this install of Debian testing. There is no more difference between the FF you download from Mozilla, assuming it is the same version number, than there is between the Ubuntu default install of FF with the default package of ubufox or whatever they call it.

Debian just likes to close security problems a bit faster than Mozilla does.

If you want the Debian Ice-family to report itself as it's Mozilla counterpart it actually is, open the about:config page in the browser and find the appropriate entry, then change it accordingly.

As for stability: yes, stable according to Debian. It does come with the expense of 'older' software, but as the corporate world proves: sticking with proven software makes companies more comfortable (Win-XP, IE6 anyone? ), even at the expense of security... Best of luck starting up your new Linux-based office!

PS: Debian is distro of choice for many server sys-admins. Cent-OS isn't bad, but servers rely on stability and availability and Debian Stable is therefore very well suited for the task...

Yea i did the about:config and changed the usergent to general.useragent.extra.firefox;Firefox/3.5.16

Pandora.com is one of the sites that still doesn't recognize the browser. I guess that something I'll work on. Its not a huge issue. All though I would like to get it to work.

I have run a Debian desktop (at work) for a little over a year, and I've been really happy with it. Most recent case in point: I upgraded the OS to Wheezy (which is "testing" until the freeze happens later this year), and it went splendidly. It's very attractive to me that one can modify a single config file - sources.list(5) - and use aptitude(8) to do an OS upgrade. That's a feature that is sorely lacking in RHEL (my usual weapon of choice).

Yep, the Iceweasel / Icedove naming is annoying (and, as you probably know, the result of a trademark dispute). But you get used to the names in about ten minutes.

If my employer did not already have an organization-wide RHEL license, I'd likely be aggressively lobbying to run Debian on all of our GNU/Linux hosts.

A bit outdated but take a look at Iceweasel and User Agents - http://www.geticeweasel.org/useragent/

User Agent Switcher - http://chrispederick.com/work/user-agent-switcher/
User Agent Switcher :: Add-ons for Firefox - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...er/?src=search

Yea I got it to work with the user agent switcher app. I switched it to Firefox Windows and it worked fine.

But yea I don't get why debian had to rebrand firefox. I mean after all rhet patches Apache Code and so does Debian but you don't see them rebranding it.

To be honest I think debian is keeping their software upto date even after their release of that version is dead/frozen. Mozzilla needs to get off there high horse .

But yea I got iceweasel working out now.

read the articles:
Iceweasel IS Firefox - http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=73796

Yes I am aware of that. But some websites still don't recognize. Otherwise I wouldn't need that useragent app to get it to work. Unless its just linux version of firefox. I guess I could test that out sometime to see, but I still think it is iceweasel.

I have to agree with that, I have had some websites that will not work as they should until the user agent addon is pointed to FireFox.

Well here is an update I figured I would ditch sqeeze since its only a desktop and backed up my data reformated and install wheezy minimal installation. I installed gnome shell with the latest iceweasal and flash. I must say pandora works now with out the user agent switcher. My video card even seems to run way faster for some reason. But I'm loving it.

To help keep it stable install the package "apt-listbugs".

This will list the KNOWN bugs for any package you are trying to install or upgrade in apt or synaptic (at least if you have Settings>Preferences>General>Apply changes in a terminal window checked).

Some will not apply to your hardware, some will. You can choose to install the things or not. You can pin the version that is not buggy or just apt-get install the other packages and wait for the bug to clear.

Big help to me anyway.

Ubuntu used that package through 8.04LTS (Horny Horse) and then dropped the package from the repo. That was a good move seeing how reluctant they seem to be about working on bugs.

apt-get install apt-listbugs apt-listchanges

Should both be required packages on testing and sid.