tsunam said:
Well i'm a gentoo user and the only time ihave to really do something manually, is when I need to install a new kernel. Say go from 2.4.22 to 2.4.25, well for me personally i'm running 2.6.4 and running amazingly stable on a p3 500.
emerge is the gentoo version of apt-get (its either apt or ape ^.^ ) Course i'm biased so

. Debian is a excelent stable build. Part ofthat is because all the stuff that it uses is proven tried and true some months ago. It therefore is a great choice for a server. There is also a development version that I believe White is using, and when he's here. He can tell you about the experience with it.
Yup. Here i am, dyed in the wool debian user. (Yes, it
is apt-get... apget...hehe... cracks me up.

)
The thing about debian, as compared to other distros, is that there are three diffrent versions at any one time. First off is stable. Stable, you will find is just that. Rock solid to the core. This is because everything has been tested for months, if not years. If you havent picked it up on it yet, this means that stable (Woody, its code name.), is a little behind on "modern" times. (KDE in stable is still 2.2).
Then there is "Testing". Testing is a machine built distro, updated often (Usually anywhere from more than daily, to every three days.). In this section are all the programs that have come down from "Unstable" (See below), as not breaking anything. From the debian site:
Packages are installed into the `testing' directory after they have undergone some degree of testing in unstable.
They must be in sync on all architectures where they have been built and mustn't have dependencies that make them uninstallable; they also have to have fewer release-critical bugs than the versions currently in testing. This way, we hope that `testing' is always close to being a release candidate.
More information about the status of "testing" in general and the individual packages is available at
http://www.debian.org/devel/testing
Testing(Code name Sarge) is usually safe to use, and more people use sarge than woody. The only thing with testing is that you need to know how to recover from the occasional Screw up. (KDE 3.2.1 is in Testing/unstable)
Unstable is last but not least. From the Debian site:
sid or unstable is the place where most of the packages are initially uploaded. It will never be released directly, because packages which are to be released will first have to be included in testing, in order to be released in stable later on. sid contains packages for both released and unreleased architectures.
The name "sid" also comes from the "Toy Story" animated motion picture: Sid was the boy next door who destroyed toys
Sid is the most up to date debian release. Usually update daily, at least, it is where you will find your cutting edge software. The downside to unstable is that it is all automatic. No one has control over possibly system destroying packages (Everyone after using debian for a while hears the story about how PAM broke, and people had to figure out how to log into their fubared machines).
I personally use Sid, beacuse it is the most up to date. That and i dont have a problem with reinstalling if necsisary. (I got used to that under windows, though i still prefer to try to FIX linux, instead of reinstall).
As Tsunam has said before, alot of this comes right down to personal preferance. Some people are in heaven in an RPM distro, but personally i like not having to deal with dependancies (BTW, did i mention that apt will automagically resolve all dependancies?)
Gentoo can be a great distro, if you have some time, and a decent computer. (i wouldnt reccomend it for any computer that you cant have out of commisin for 4+ hours compiling somthing. Or anything slower than... 400....)