Distro-hopping...

Ok, why is it that I am running Debian on all my computers ?

Just like most of the other users, I started using PC's with Windows... 3.1 on an Olivetti laptop in 1995, then all the others, 98, ME, 2k and XP...

But I am a sucker for Freedom, and around 2003 I started reading about Linux... It was Mandrake and Red Hat... But I was on dial-up... Never made it until a friend gave me a Knoppix 3.2 live-cd.

It looked good. But I couldn't use my winmodem :(

I also received 10 Ubuntu 4.10 cd's in 2004, I gave most to friends... On my PC's the sound didn't work...

I then downloaded Mepis 3.3 (over a dial-up connection... it took ages !) in early 2005.

Warren (the Mepis dev) included the winmodem driver, so I could really install it in dual-boot and surf the net over my dial-up. My Linux life was starting "for real".

I finally subscribed to ADSL in july 2005. Then a real distro-fever started for me, and lasted until this winter, when I totally settled on Debian.

Over those past 3 years, I used and installed Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, Debian, Knoppix, Kanotix, Blag, PCLOS, Mint, Mepis, OpenSUSE, Vector, Zenwalk, Slackware, Pardus, Wolvix of various versions... I used often live-cd's such as Puppy, DSL, Dyne:Bolic...

I used KDE, Xfce, Fluxbox, WindowMaker, IceWM, but most of all Gnome, my DE of choice.

In the Debian Sarge days, there was a guy who issued an iso with Debian Sarge+codecs... It was called PureDebian... I enjoyed it a lot, as it was easy to set up... It doesn't exists anymore, and it's good, because I had to learn how to do things in Debian.

For the most part of those 3 years I used Fedora (starting with Blag, then going for the "original")... It worked well on my hardware.

But the Debian Social Contract (here: http://www.debian.org/social_contract ) made a strong impression on me. I wanted to be part of that...

A year ago (spring 2007) I installed Debian Etch on most my PC's except my main desktop. I wasn't educated enough about Debian to get all the stuff to work (my TV card, for instance...)

So I stuck with Fedora. Last fall (2007), I tested the big 4 (Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora Suse). They were all good. But I wanted to escape that 6 months release cycle, as it didn't felt right for my own needs. I used Fedora 8 a bit, I used Mint a bit... Couldn't make up my mind, until one day I just downloaded a Debian Testing netinst, and made it !

I really enjoyed Debian Testing... But suddenly I changed motherboard+cpu. I went from k7 to amd64. So I decided on a clean install, but went for Debian Stable instead.

-Why Debian Stable when Testing looks so much more fun ?

Testing was the fast rolling release concept, just like Arch, for instance...

But Stable was really what I need. It still can be a rolling release, in the sense that one can change one's sources.list and upgrade from Sarge to Etch to Lenny (never tried yet...)

So this is it, I have most my boxes using Debian Stable. I plan on giving more details later...