Most Stable Linux Distro?

[angryfirelord]

Right now I'm using Gentoo. Uptime is 25 days. I only kill X from time to time to free some memory; same with Firefox. In my opinion Gentoo is more stable than Debian Testing, can't say about Stable.

I think that depends more on the administrator's knowledge. I've used Debian Testing for a little bit and I've never encountered a stability issue. With Gentoo, unless you read closely about the updates and apply them regularly, you won't have a stable system if you update blindly. Of course, I don't use Gentoo, so use some salt.

[Mithrilhall]

When one asks of stability Debian comes to mind for me. I've had good experiences with CentOS as well but Debian is always my first choice.

And I wouldn't consider Ubuntu stable. Stable enough for most users, sure but I've had problems with it before.

[SunnyRabbiera]

A toss up between Slackware and Debian, both are well known for their reliability.
Gentoos pretty solid too

[deepclutch]

well....pss..gentoo? got some problem with their administration thingy eh?I read in desktoplinux.com I think

[aBitLater]

If you mean "Stable" as in "Stable enough for the desktop user", then pretty much any distro that doesn't use bleeding edge packages will suite you fine, which includes Ubuntu, openSuSE, Slackware, Debian Testing, etc.

I know this is old, but I'm currently exploring the same question. I have to disagree (politely) with the statement above. My Ubuntu 8.10 has all sorts of problems, just that they mostly go un-noticed.

Pulse Audio breaks and/or is buggy
gnome session manager breaks
nvidia freaks out
compiz is the buggiest piece of $#!% on the planet
dbus has issues

It is VERY frustrating to research the errors I see in syslog and find that these errors have existed for quite a long time in launchpad, across multiple releases.

My feeling is that Ubuntu releases never get a chance to mature. (except perhaps the longer term releases, of which I think Hardy Herron is one, but I suppose the errors I'm seeing in Intrepid are not fixed on Hardy Herron either.)

[chucky chuckaluck]

i've had very little trou ble with arch, but i have a minimum setup (less installed, less to go wrong).

[jrusso2]

Slackware, Debian and Arch are usually very stable distros.

[chucky chuckaluck]

i wonder which is the most unstable distro (not that there's anything wrong with that...).

[jrusso2]

i wonder which is the most unstable distro (not that there's anything wrong with that...).

Fedora IMHO.

[spupy]

A stable installation is one that isn't updated often once everything is set up and running.