Need help deciding which Debian to install
 

Hi

What is the difference between Sid (unstable) and Squeeze (testing) ?

Is it better to download Squeeze(testing) rather than Lenny(stable) because the software is more up to date?

Or would I want to get Sid? How unstable is it?

This is for a desktop by the way.

You can try some livecd's?

sidux is sid
http://sidux.com/

pureos is squeeze
http://pureos.org/index.php?lang=english

nFlux debian is squeeze too
http://multidistro.com/downloads/nflux.html

I agree with linus72, try the LiveCDs. To clarify: in terms of stability (most to least) Lenny>Sid>Squeeze; in terms of latest packages (newest to oldest) Squeeze>Sid>Lenny.

http://crunchbanglinux.org/ is based on Debian Squeeze

Give sidux a try, it only takes around 5 minutes to install.

Thanks to all for the suggestions. I'll try a couple of live cd's this weekend.

One more question. If I install Debian Lenny (stable) could I download more updated packages meant for Sid? For eg, Lenny comes with KDE 3.59, Squeeze has 4.34 and Sid has the latest KDE 4.43 (which I want). Will they run on Lenny or are there dependency probs?

With something as big as kde you would probably have to upgrade to sid, otherwise you would run into a ton of dependency issues.

if you want sid I would just install sidux, it is the closest to "pure" Debian as you can get without installing Debian itself.

sidux is based on Debian sid and uses the normal Debian repos. Plus it has a nice manual/wiki.

As a general rule it doesn't make much sense mixing Debian-stable and Debian-testing
(if it works or not is not the question. The meaning of stable means it *is* stable. That's its purpose. If you don't care about that you can run testing).

Both, testing and unstable are quite stable for a while now. That said: the bigger your environment is, the more vulnerable it is. You say you want kde, so in that case it might be different.
Else i don't see much reasons not to run Debian-testing or Debian-unstable or a mixed testing/unstable system. At forums.debian.org is a how-to do that.

You can't install unstable. You got to install testing and upgrade to unstable.

If you want to test Debian-live test Debian-live (and not Sidux, crunchbang or whatever):
http://live.debian.net/cdimage/squeeze-builds/

Sidux?...sometimes it's better not to speak. But it is a good OS.