"I put a lot of stock on the ability to do an in-place upgrade of my Linux/Unix desktops. And regarding upgrades from one distribution to another, Debian is supposedly one of the best.
"You always hear about those hard-core geeks who have been running the same box since Potato, dist-upgrading all the way to whatever the current stable or testing distribution is at any given moment.
"I've upgraded a stable Debian system to testing maybe once or twice, usually in short order (i.e. installing stable and immediately upgrading to testing).
"Yesterday I decided to upgrade my "production" Debian laptop, which I've been using heavily since late last year, from Lenny (stable) to Squeeze (testing). I thought it would be smooth and easy.
"Not so much."
