What is the REAL difference in terms of general use between stable and unstable releases?

or in other words - is Debian Sid or Debian Woody better for an ambitious beginner?

You forgot testing.

Stable = OLD, known to run well together.

Testing = Newer, likely to work well, but not
necessarily all combinations of packets known-good

Unstable = latest and cutting, no, bleeding edge stuff.
Reasonably high probability of breaking things :0


Cheers,
Tink

i didn't forget testing, i understood that bit, thanks though it all makes perfect sense now

will stick to stable ...am too good at breaking things, never fix them...

Testing is pretty low-risk, though, if the machine is
going to be a work-station rather than a server stable
is a bit too dated to be good ;)


Cheers,
Tink

yeah? ok maybe I'll try it then (am still quite cautious, maybe that's the thing coming out of windows - u don't trust anything!)

any particular version of debian u can recomend??
purely cuz I like the sound of debian and it seems to be the one that most music peoples refer to when they talk about the latest developments


cheers

Hi,

Any version of Débian? Try Débian testing wich is curently called Sarge and will be the next stable (hopefully in september : )
I'm kind of a newbie myself and enjoy linux to the full in testing. You can see Débian running on Knopppix live cd and some other too. Don't forget to make at least three partition one for / everything programms and config, /home your settings documents and files, /swap a way to accelerate your pc if your short on Ram. Make it two times your Ram up to 256M won't see so much of a différence over 256 M Ram.

Good luck,