it's a couple of years i'm working with linux and now i'm quite confident to be ready for debian. i've always seen it as the final destination in my linux learning path due to its strong base of freedom and independence. as far i can see a new flame war has started between debian and ubuntu fans, so i'd like to make my own opinion on both distro. how can manage the dual boot between dabian and ubuntu? (i'm worried about the two step installation process of debian).

It won't be a problem. Just use seperate filesystems (partitions) and you would be able do it fine. You can share the swap.

If you have any troubles doing it, you know where to seek help: LQ.

Note:If you use disk lables, remember to use different ones.

i can use two separate hd of 40mb and 20mb. what do you suggest: debian on the fisrt and ubuntu on the second, or the other way round? what about the dabian version: sarge or etch?

You mean 40GB and 20GB, right? Well, for just the installations you don't need such big amounts. So your choise to install which on which would not matter unless you are having other plans which consume disk space.

Sarge is the current stable version. And Etch is the development branch. And has newer packages. So if you want stability, go for Sarge. But if you are bit more adventure-like you can give Etch a try.

I myself use Sarge. Couldn't try Etch. I'll stick to Sarge for sometime because I got a few importants things to do. Right now I want a working (production) environment, which sounds "Sarge". When I'm ready for some testing and would not bother about a few applications breaking, I'll try Etch.

Sarge is using packages older than Breezy. I'm not sure about Etch.

... this is the part where I jump in and tell about my first-hand experience with running Debian/testing (currently etch).

It breaks rarely enough that you can live with it. If you take appropriate countermeasures, you can reduce breakage even further.

A few examples:
Currently, gpdf crashes when opening any pdf document (presumably all the documents I read are made by pdflatex, so I may be overgeneralising). To compensate, I use xpdf instead. Except that in fluxbox, it doesn't do "fit to width" properly, so I start a seperate X w. gnome/metacity for that.

I won't lie: it's a bit annoying. However, if I used pdfs a lot, I'm sure I could find a way (through google, #debian, ...) to fix it.

During my 17 months of using debian (~16 months of testing, IIRC), I've only encountered two episodes of major, consistent breakage:

once, where some gnome file-browsing widget was crashing, thus rendering the save/open of gedit (and most other gnome programs) useless. Workaround: use vlc and/or xmms instead of totem, don't use nautilus, use glimmer (or whatever) instead of gedit. Basically, suck it up for a week and a half until the upgrades arrive.

Other breakage: evolution would consistently crash on startup. I actually found a fix for evolution (involving downgrading a few libraries), but my package manager wasn't cooperating. The alternative solution was to switch MUA (which I had had in mind anyways).

---

I forgot my point.

I guess my point is that testing is by far stable enough to use on a desktop machine (if microsoft products are stable enough, testing passes with flying colours). Yes, it does break from time to time, and sometimes the easiest thing is to just suck it up for the time being. But if you really need a fix, it can be done without extreme effort.

Oh yeah, countermeasures. If you install apt-listbugs and pin all packages which would become worse, bug-wise, by upgrading, you can reduce breakage with a fairly good effort-to-effect ratio. You might want to set up cron jobs to check that the bugs are still open (and, of course, to download all package upgrades overnight ^_^).

I'm just another
Clueless Debian user
But not in the spring
(apologies to Larry Wall)

--Jonas

Rather than using both Debian and Ubuntu, why not go with just Debian. Ubuntu is based off Debian, so if you want totally different kinds of Linux experiences, you should probably get your hands into Slackware as well.

Try out different distros if you have the time and energy. It can be a very rewarding learning experience.