I have heard that debian has a much larger repository list than Mandrake. Is this true?

The reason I ask is that I keep running into software that says it is debian specific. Such as PeerGuardian and Flightgear. Also Mandrake doesn't seem to be updating very quickly, I am using kde 3.2 and apparently there is a 3.3 and a 3.4. I found the link to thac's rpm and tried to install, but crashed and died. Had to reformat, and start over, probably not, but as I am a newbie I couldn't not get it to reboot.

Just some concerns.

I believe Debian does have a larger repository than Mandrake. That doesn't concern me much, because Debian's core philosophy is different: it aims to be a rock-solid, stable release. That means that it's current "stable" version (Woody) is very much *NOT* up-to-date. By default, it installs the 2.2 kernal and KDE 2.2.2! Even the next version (Sarge), which is still in "Testing" is quite a bit behind the leading edge, by default. If you want Debian to be reasonably up-to-date, you use the "Unstable" version (Sid). Unstable means, of course, that not everything has been thoroughly tested and integrated, and may result in crashes and other problems.

In actuality, Debian "Sid" may be no more unstable than Mandrake Official Edition. Mandrake has long been known to stay on the "bleeding edge" of software. But a commercial software release cycle makes it difficult to have the latest version of all software available at all times. If you really want the absolute most recent versions of any software available, I would recommendbuilding everything from source, ala Slackware, or Gentoo. Then, if something doesn't work the way you want it to, you can dig into the code to find the cause of the problem and either fix it yourself, or submit a detailed bug report to the developers.