Which debian version should I install?

[Dustin2128]

I'm planning on installing debian to a spare partition I've got leftover from an ubuntu install I destroyed with some bad advice from the forums. Which version in particular would be the best for me if I like to have: A. Up to date and beta software, and B: a usable system (not too unstable or missing firmware blobs)?

[snowpine]

Debian is not the right distro if you like to have "up to date and beta software." Debian is a very stable and conservative distro. I think Ubuntu, Fedora, or Arch would be a better choice for your specific needs.

[Dustin2128]

I know that it's fairly conservative, but I figure unstable should suit my purposes. I'm not a big fan of fedora, I can never manage to get arch installed correctly, and I want to try something other than ubuntu.

[snowpine]

Debian Unstable is unstable (duh) and does not include nonfree "firmware blobs."

But give it a try if you like... :)

[youbuntu]

... I destroyed with some bad advice from the forums

I suggest you seek advice from many places (websites, blogs, forums), and work out the "average answer" when doing potentially risky operations such as partitioning. I'm not sure I understand why you made that point. I apologise if I have misread this comment.

Maybe you'd be wise to practice on a spare drive which doesn't matter, in future, or steer clear of these risky adventures :)

[Dustin2128]

Debian Unstable is unstable (duh) and does not include nonfree "firmware blobs."

But give it a try if you like... :)

Stable compared to other distros though. Eh. maybe I'll give fedora another shot. As for the accident, it was a thing with experimental video drivers. I could probably fix it in 30 seconds, but I'm extremely lazy.

[youbuntu]

Stable compared to other distros though. Eh. maybe I'll give fedora another shot. As for the accident, it was a thing with experimental video drivers. I could probably fix it in 30 seconds, but I'm extremely lazy.

Therein lies your answer - don't be lazy, and learn how to fix things :lol:

Hehe ;)

[snowpine]

Stable compared to other distros though. Eh. maybe I'll give fedora another shot. As for the accident, it was a thing with experimental video drivers. I could probably fix it in 30 seconds, but I'm extremely lazy.

Debian Unstable might be more stable than some distros I suppose, but it's definitely not more stable than Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, etc.

Anyways if you are "lazy" then it is probably not a good choice. (No offense meant of course, you said it not me.) Debian Unstable updates 4x per day, and any one of those updates could break your system; you really need to stay on top of things. If you're looking for a really easy, low-maintenance distro, Ubuntu or Mint are your best choices, in my opinion.

[el_koraco]

as always, grandpa debian has the topic pretty well covered
http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-choosing.en.html

[Dustin2128]

Debian Unstable might be more stable than some distros I suppose, but it's definitely not more stable than Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, etc.

Anyways if you are "lazy" then it is probably not a good choice. (No offense meant of course, you said it not me.) Debian Unstable updates 4x per day, and any one of those updates could break your system; you really need to stay on top of things. If you're looking for a really easy, low-maintenance distro, Ubuntu or Mint are your best choices, in my opinion.
By extremely lazy, I mean I've got my slack partition set up the way I like and I see little point in booting into the ubuntu partition now that all my data's recovered. Main thing I want is a partition for staying up to date. Slack's rock solid, but I've been itching to try gnome shell and kde 4.6. As for my adversity to using ubuntu, let's just say I dislike the general direction it's taken, and that the performance shift from using other distros to ubuntu is quite noticeable, particularly in the 3D area.

[snowpine]

I've been itching to try gnome shell and kde 4.6.

Then I'm 100% convinced Debian is not the distro for you. Debian Unstable has Gnome 2.30 and KDE 4.4.5.

It will probably be about 2 years before KDE 4.6 and Gnome Shell are part of Debian Stable.

Why not give Ubuntu 11.04 Beta or Fedora 15 Alpha a test drive?

[Dustin2128]

Then I'm 100% convinced Debian is not the distro for you. Debian Unstable has Gnome 2.30 and KDE 4.4.5.

It will probably be about 2 years before KDE 4.6 and Gnome Shell are part of Debian Stable.

Why not give Ubuntu 11.04 Beta or Fedora 15 Alpha a test drive?
Not too many blank CDs to burn, so I'm going to try out fedora 14 once I'm done with my backup.

[snowpine]

Not too many blank CDs to burn, so I'm going to try out fedora 14 once I'm done with my backup.

Fedora 14 is very nice (I run it on my EEE) but it does not have Gnome Shell or KDE 4.6. You'll need Fedora 15, if that's your criteria.

http://distrowatch.com is a great resource for choosing a distro.

ps if you have a 1gb+ thumb drive, you don't need to burn a CD to try a new distro...

[Dustin2128]

ah whatever, I started burning the disc literally 10 seconds before I read that. I'll just compile from source or something, shouldn't be too difficult when you don't have to jump through hoops to get regular gnome installed like on slack.

[cbowman57]

The best I've found so far is Linux Mint LMDE, it's sort of midway between ubuntu & hardcore debian.

I've still got it installed after tweaking it to the max but I realized that basically everything I did was turning it into ubuntu so I just shifted back to one of my favorite ubuntu installations. :)

As always YMMV.

[Lucradia]

You can't be lazy with rolling-release, etc. If you want debian, you need to change its repos to say testing, not the actual release name of testing.

It's far more stable than sid / experimental, but it's as cutting-edge as ubuntu. (You need to install experimental if you want the latest unbranded firefox, aka, iceweasel.)

[NightwishFan]

I use Stable or Testing. Things just working is important to me and I am uninterested in newer software. Most people want to use newer stuff for the sake of it really and that is something I disagree with as a policy. Right now you will find that unstable and testing will get newer stuff really quickly as the freeze for squeeze is over.

If you like newer stuff, just run unstable. It will work well and bugs will get fixed usually in less than a few days. It also has newer -dev packages so compiling upstream stuff is simple.

Do you know how to get unstable? Just install stable or testing and edit the sources to say "unstable" instead of testing or squeeze. Then run this as root:

apt-get dist-upgrade

I found Debian 6 (stable) does everything for me and seems a lot more conservative towards things working right and being trim on memory usage. Here are some screenshots of Debian 6 in virtualbox using not too much ram. :)