“Debian’s latest stable distribution, dubbed “Slink”, was
initially released on 9 March 1999, and is currently at revision
3.”
“Debian still manages to pull out in front of the pack. Firstly,
the latest stable release is still running with kernel 2.0.36.
Secondly, Debian uses its unique and particularly robust packaging
system (dpackage or apt with .deb files), rather than RPM or some
derivative thereof like most other distributions. Debian also seems
to be even more in touch with Linux’s free software roots than the
competition in that the 300+ package maintainers are spread all
around the world, and all work according to their Social Contract.
This distributed organization also forced the development of the
highly efficient Debian bug tracking system. Thanks to this,
security-problems and bugs are often fixed and updates made
available in a matter of hours or even minutes after reports are
received.”
“Furthermore, Debian is about as far from “bleeding edge” as
you can get, reflected not only by their choice of kernel version,
but also to a great extent, in the packages offered with the
distribution. You won’t find any new, cool or hip gadgets here;
surprisingly enough, this is one of Debian’s selling points.
Or rather, it’s a natural consequence of the underlying
philosophy.”