hi !

as title says i am looking for a stable distribution, i'm going to erase two partitions with unstable distros, wanna this new year to start with 'stability' ...

thanks in advance !

ps i have right now Debian Stable on my first partition

What kind of stable distribution? Desktop or server?

Do you mean that you want long term support or a distro known to be reliable?

Slackware or SalixOS

^
mmm ... aint sure bout slack and derivatives ...

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Desktop,

reliable or long term no matter . . .

Since you are already using Debain, the two other most stable distros I've used have been Slackware and Mageia.

All listed are extremely stable. Slackware will teach you the most about managing your system, but if you're the type that doesn't want to have to constantly administer, just wants to install and use it as if it's basically an appliance, Slackware IMO is a very poor choice.

Debian has the largest repositories, and will give you great stability, but generally tends to be REALLY old software (you can enable backports to get some of the most popular software more modern). Debian you will get systemd though, if you care.

Mageia is...well, it's a GOOD distro, but nothing really shines about it to me. It's stable, but no moreso than Slack or Debian. It's got far less software in it's repos than Debian. But they do a much better job of packaging their desktops of choice default settings than Debian does IMO, if you don't want to have to customize EVERYTHING just to get to decent defaults.

I've used Arch exclusively on the home computers for a few years now. It is very stable. I have had one instance where I did an update and the machine had a poo - back when we converted the repositories to use gpg signing.

However, Arch is an expert/intermediate level system that can be complicated to set up and configure and administer if you are not sure what you are doing.

This is why I was wondering if you were looking for a long term stable distro, or an easy to use distro, or something like that.

hi szboard...

what happened with Mint ? Mintdebian ? ? Centos ? ? ? opensuse leap ? ? ? ? blahblahblah ...

Linux IS NOT only buntus, slack, debian or arch !

A few stable & solid distros, some mention already.
Debian Jessie (Stable)
SalixOS - Slackware based but user friendly
Mageia 5 is current stable version but they are working on Mga 6, coming soon.
Q4OS - Debian based with DE of Trinity based on KDE3

https://www.google.com/search?q=[2016]+Best+stable+linux+distros&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

https://www.slant.co/topics/871/~lin...s-for-desktops

http://www.techradar.com/news/softwa...ommend-1090058

a little research gave this ...

... no more opinions ... :emoyawn:

1 members found this post helpful.

The annual survey of websites shows that those servers which will identify their OS tend to be split between Debian Stable and CentOS. Slackware is as reliable, but not popular in the enterprise because it doesn't come with auto-installation. So that's it:
Debian Stable: you've got it
CentOS: the KDE version would make a nice change to Debian
Slackware: get Salix. 100% compatible, more ready-to-run software and user-friendliness, and very reliable Xfce desktop

As for the others, many are very nice (I like PCLinuxOS and Manjaro) but they have not been subjected to anything like the rigorous testing that the others have. You asked for stable, and that's what we gave you!

1 members found this post helpful.

Nothing happened to them. You obviously know about them already. I talk about the ones I use and know. Blah blah.

There is also Red Hat if you want a supported stable system.

And the BSD family is good and stable as well. Especially FreeBSD and openBSD.