"D.I. Redhouse" <dir21(a)cus.cam.ac.uk> writes:
> Didn't it go through a period of being quite badly behind most of the
> other distributions?
Well, the "stable" releases tend to be just that: tried and tested
stable versions of software rather than just whatever they managed to
get to compile on time. If you just need the latest version of one
package, then you can just say
apt-get source packagename
cd package-version
debuild binary
with an appropriate configuration, of course. Stable still has the
benefit of security updates being made available very quickly,
although you have to edit the config to enable that.
If you're feeling helpful then you can help debug the "testing" set,
or if you want *everything* to be the latest and don't mind the
occasional goof, "unstable" is for you.
> Although equally it could be something to do with the fact that a Debian
> user round these parts once described/denounced RedHat as the Windows 95
> of Linux distributions, and I developed a general theory concerning Debian
> users.
Well, Debian users are allowed to express themselves as badly as any
other Linux user. What was probably meant is either that their build
quality really isn't as good as it should be, or that RedHat's config
tools are rather over-friendly and will happily obliterate any changes
you make, while others fall over if you set things up the normal way.