Hey. I posted a week or so ago... went on a short vacation.. and am now back. I have a few more questions to ask before I commit to a distro.

I've been trying to pick a distro to use as both my desktop OS and my server OS (for consistency when I switch back and forth). I looked at Red Hat... hate the licensing deal.... looked at Suse, didn't look all that special to me... and am now looking at Debian. I like how Debian is usually very stable and reliable as well as security conscious. The one thing I keep hearing as being Debian's only drawback is that it tends to be out of date when the stable release comes out. While this makes sense why, I wonder, "how out of date is 'out of date'?"

How out of date is Debian? Is it suitable for a desktop OS? My desktop hardware is a P4 2.4 (w/ HT) on an Intel D875PBZ board with 1 gig of ram. ATI Radeon 9600 All-In-Wonder AGP, ATI Radeon 9200 PCI. There is also a sound card and firewire card, but given that I know they both work under Freebsd, I assume that they also work under Debian.

Also, I asked this before, but am I right to be seriously looking at Debian? I am starting a small company which I'd like to run off of Linux entirely so that's why I'm being somewhat anal about which distro I should use. Once it's on my servers and they're up and running, to change distros would mean to shut down my service for whatever amount of time it would take to load the new distro.

hmmm.... I was just reading through my last thread and didn't realize how similar this question is to it....

well, I'd still love to get some replies, but I do apologize for the somewhat redundant nature of this post.

Actually the whole concept of Debian being out of date is somewhat of a myth. This myth is generally perpetuated by people who are not as knowledgable about Debian as they should or could be before they pass judegement on it, and as a result, there is this whole "Debian is really old concept" out there which is just utter rubish.

For example, I run Debian. I run it on a AMD 64 processor and I do it in full blown 64 bit mode. The last time I checked there were only a small handfull of Linux Distros running in full 64 bit mode under the Athlon:

1. Suse
2. Gentoo
3. Debian
4. FreeBSD (although not Linux).

Also, when I installed Debian on my AMD 64, I did so under a 2.6.7 kernel. And like many people, I am installing KDE 3.3 (which just came out, but is available through apt). The point is, much of the stigma that follows Debian is based upon people who don't realize Sid and Sarge exist too. I run Debian on the desktop. I also run it on the Server. And I can tell you that once you get it up and running, it is great. If your worried about being cutting edge, run Sid. But, what is so great about the cutting edge? Hardware support is kernel based. And that is independant of any distro...in that you can download and recompile the kernel anytime you want. And in all honesty, really should after a fresh install I feel.

i agree with clark, debian is only as out of date as you let it and it is as up to date as you want.

to clarify on sid and sarge, these are the testing builds of debian. the stable version is called woody (although they are promoting sarge to stable soon). sarge is the testing build and is generally stable. sid is the unstable build, use at your own risk.

the debian-net installer will download and configure your system to use the sarge build. a simple edit of the sources.list file will let you use either sarge or sid to install updates and packages with apt-get.

yes, woody was released some time ago, but with apt-get you can update anything and everything on your machine when you want, icluding the kernel. your hardware is more than adequate to run a very nice debian installation. the support is excellent from places like linuxquestions.org and other forums such as http://forums.debianplaza.net/

good luck

the current stable version, woody, is horribly out of date for desktop usage.

However, the current testing version is nearing completion and should be released as a stable version soon (1-2 months perhaps). If possible, you might want to wait for that, since testing and unstable do not have official security support from the debian security team.

+ps: the current testing version/soon to be stable version/sarge is not out of date at all, it's quite modern and has everything a linux distribution should have.

I tried to install wood on my laptop a week ago... I tried about 7 times and it failed every time.. I tried the net-inst disc for Sarge and it went perfect the first time... It, by default installed kernel 2.4 (but if at the initial boot-prompt you type "linux26" it will install 2.6), I downloaded the source for the 2.6.7 kernel and recompiled... the first time i've ever done it... It is running spectacular... and is running the latest version of gnome... I unistalled KDE because I don't really like it.. it's too cartoonish i think.. I don't know.. that's just a personal preference... But Sarge is very stable... And it's running great...

My notebook is a:

Pentium 4 2.4 GHz
40 GB HD
512 DDR RAM
internal floppy
3 USB ports
DVD-CDRW combo drive

the only thing I had to do was add the 1024x768 resolution to the XF86Config-4 file... I even have all my Wi-Fi support enabled.. It would make an excellent server... and I recommend it a great deal...

I've used (in chronological order beginning last Sept.):

Red Hat 9 (retail)
Fedora Core 1
SuSE 9.0 Professional (retail)
FreeBSD 5.1
Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 3 (retail)
Fedora Core 2
Mandrake 10
Debian 3.1 (Sarge)

They all had their good and bad points.. And since trying Debian a week and a half ago... I have decided to make that my new primary OS... And as the above posts stated... It's only as out-of-date as you let it become... The reason it tends to be slightly more out-of-date than others is because it one of the oldest, and has a great reputation as being one of the most *rock-solid* distro's around...

The best thing to do is just install it.. Use Sarge with the net-inst disc if you have decend bandwidth, recompile your kernel (so you can turn on/off the specific things that you need)... run apt-get update then apt-get dist-upgrade (all packages wil be upgraded to the latest version.)
Get it configured the way you want... and leave it alone.. it'll run for years... I found a good tuorial on kernel recompile if you've never done it.. ( http://www.desktop-linux.net/debkernel.htm ) Good Luck!

I've suddenly become quite interested in Sarge. I have been aware of Sarge and Sid for a while now, but never really considered using them. If I install Sarge, when Sarge goes stable, and I update to stable (assuming I'm using Sarge at that point), will it be the same as if I did a fresh install of Sarge? I hear that the way Debian updates makes it practically a new system each time. Or is it better for me to wait for Sarge to go stable and then update?

"I've suddenly become quite interested in Sarge. I have been aware of Sarge and Sid for a while now, but never really considered using them. If I install Sarge, when Sarge goes stable, and I update to stable (assuming I'm using Sarge at that point), will it be the same as if I did a fresh install of Sarge?"

Sid > unstable
Sarge > testing
Woody > stable

If you install Sarge, and a month from now it is announced that Sarge is the 'stable' version, you have to do NOTHING as long as your sources.list points to 'sarge'. You can do a sporadically update/ugrade, but that's it.

For further information on different versions, packages, and news, do yourself a favor and go to www.debian.org and do some serious reading.

I know what the different versions are and what they correspond to, however I assumed that between now and the time sarge is "stable" there will be updates. That's why I asked that question.

what's the diff? as testing you will have to update/upgrade, after it becomes stable, you'll do it less frequently.

Another key point for people to keep in mind who are considering installing Debian is to investigate which ISO is best suited for you. I think a lot of people decide to try Debian and don't understand why there are so many different ISO dics one can download. I have seen numerous threads across many a site where people are asking which ISO to download. Well, as many of my fellow Debianites can attest to, some of the different ISO images have different kernels. If a person goes with the first two ISO images you do infact wind up with a old kernel. Perhaps a kernel that doesn't support the hardware required. And the most annoying part of a old kernel is finding one that doesn't support your NIC card. It's happened to me. But there are numerous ways around that. One is to find the ISO images having more updated kernels (disc 5 for example came with a 2.4 kernel). My personal more preferred method is to download a kernel on another machine before I even start. Once I install Debian I then copy that kernel to CD, untar it and compile a fresh shiny new kernel (again this is assuming the installed kernel doesn't support the NIC in question) and I'm off and running utilizing whatever flavor I wish....stable...testing...unstable...it's all in the sources a person uses for apt.

Debian has a reputation for being a more "difficult" distro. But really I don't agree. It does however, require you to think a bit and plan a little. And once you do, you find it isn't outdated at all. As a previous poster pointed out, the net based installs are quite nice and can get a person around the issue with older kernels.

I really think that the naming convention as far as stable, testing, and unstable could use some better descriptions. For example, if in passing conversation, a person says that they are moving away from Debian stable to Debian testing or unstable, and a person who is not very well versed in that subject hears that, they walk away thinking that testing and unstable are going to crash all the time. Now while we take our chances with unstable (only had problems with unstable once myself), it is worth pointing out I think that people understand what Stable is. Stable is beyond stable. Stable is bulletproof run solid as a rock regardless. It really is not intended as a desktop version for the general public. It is intended for server based applications and serious workstation applications where the intent of the user is one less focused on casual use, but necessity. We could all argue the concept of necessity, but I think stable is the extreme. Extremely stable. But then again, the Debian community expects it's userbase to educate themselves on their own needs I guess. And part of the stigma associated with that is people who have misunderstandings.

Completely new at this, I downloaded Woody/2.2 in Feb. Have since learned to change my package source to unstable repeat unstable and add upgrade everything from there. I upgraded kernel twice and am on 2.6.7.....every other night or so I run apt-get update, then apt-get upgrade. I have only run into incompatability or broken package problems a couple of time...all fixiable by the apt/dpkg systems. Out of date ? Just like any distro, if you find something you really want or need unavail in your distro, download source of latest and make it work. I am very happy with debian.

Debian stable is somewhat old to begin with, but the real problem is the 2+ years between releases. Woody is too old to even install on some hardware! However, Sarge will soon be "stable" and though it's probably not "latest and greatest", it's probably reasonbly current. Of course many Debian users use testing or unstable, both of which are as current as any distro.

Debian unstable is a lot more stable than windows ever was for me.