Well I tried it for about two weeks. It hardly came with any codecs - and gave no clear indication how to obtain those that a 'n00b' would need to play their mutimedia files. It was pretty sparce, didn't come with many applications - and the repositories were rarely ever updated in any major way - so that on one instance I went a full 5 days without a single update. (If you understood Debian, you would know how unusual that was). Indeed I think that really they only do major upgrades between distributions. My advice is, if you like Debian and enjoy using apt-get, try a much more pure Debian distro like Kanotix. It promises (unlike Ubuntu/Kubuntu) to maintain almost full compatability with the debian unstable source tree, which still managing to offer a fairly wide spread of the very latest apps and features.

It took me two weeks to set up Ubuntu - and two days to fully set up Kanotix.

I like being able to go to official and unnoficial repositories specifically built for Debian Sid unstable, while being safe knowing that I am not breaking my system by mixing packages from other distros.

I just feel much more connected to the wider Debian community by doing things this way.

GJ
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MEPIS fully supports mp3 playback out of the box AFAIK, and it's using the same philosophy as Ubuntu. Actually it was the 4th most popular distro on DistroWatch last time I checked, and I'm surprised it's not getting more attention as well. 1 CD, easy to use, blah blah blah. I think it's even better designed in one way, as the very same CD you download for use as a Live CD is used to install MEPIS onto your harddrive if you like it. The distro is just KDE based instead of Gnome, which should appeal even more to Windows users, I think.

Like Ubuntu, MEPIS is Debian-based.
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OK, I realise it can be used in more powerful ways, but that's how I'd see it!?
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Well I have no problem installing codecs for MP3 playback, or any other kind of playback for that matter.

Also you speak as though almost no QA goes into any of the other official Debian branches. I assure you it does - which is why as you said it has taken 3 years plus to approach the point where they may soon release another stable version of their distro.

And Ubuntu don't take so long to release updates because they care so much about QA. I'm sure they do care about QA - but their biggest problem is lack of developers.

I know for a fact that they are a relatively small team (Kubuntu for example only has two developers maintaining the entire project).

Their problem is trying to do QA in the light of having so few staff and so many updates comming daily from the regular debian peeps to deal with.

Also I don't like distros very much that break compatability with the official Debian source tree. I'm all for variety, but when it comes down to having several different versions of Debian that are largely incompatable with each other, then I think it just gets silly.

Far better to strive to maintain compatability and work with the Debian developers, so that any problems that users might encounter can very quickly be passed up stream and and might have a much better chance of being resolved than they would if it were left to a few developers with little time to answer user concerns, because they are too busy continually trying to play catch up with the debian development team.

And no updates isn't necessarily a good thing. What about security holes? What about bugs? At least with the official debian distros if you have a problem on a particular day, there is a good chance that it might be resolved a few days later by one of the many updates that are regularly released. This is true even for the regular Debian 'Woody' stable branch where many new updates are applied on a regular (sometimes daily) basis.

What you have to realize here, is that most of Linux zealots are pretty clueless.

They think because they compile everything from scratch and spend countless hours building their system from scratch that it "is more powerful" than your average out of the box Linux distro.

Couldn't be further from the truth.

Just because Ubuntu is easy to setup and use out of the box, it doesn't make it any "less powerful" than any other distro out there, just the way things are done and operated is different.
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The problem with Linux now a day is that it is useless to run it on less than powerful machines (I am talking about Pentium MMX 200 Mhz class machine). Even Damn Small Linux has troubles at times.

Instead of Linux (which is merely a kernel with tons of packages), I would highly suggest a proven OS such as OpenBSD/FreeBSD.

Ubuntu is not that great, but its simplicity gives the distro the edge over others. Now if you are only talking about simplicity, BSD does even better job. Everything is simple, and even the app-get in Debian is a copied concept from BSD ports system. What more do I need to say?

User interface in Ubuntu is limited as it does not give you a whole lot of options. If you depend on KDE based applications heavily, you are in troubles. With BSD however, you have unrestricted options on what GUI to use.
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User interface in Ubuntu is limited as it does not give you a whole lot of options. If you depend on KDE based applications heavily, you are in troubles. With BSD however, you have unrestricted options on what GUI to use.
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I hate Ubuntu and all Debian based distro's. Their scripts are so different to what I'm used to, it feels like a completly different OS.
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Yeah, but you use gentoo, so we love ya anyway! Your like the crazy uncle that is always out in the shed hot rodding a blender!
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The thing is I prefer Debian, not Knoppix, MEPIS, just pure Debian. I understand that they haven't released a stable release since 2002, but who really uses the stable? Sarge is stable enough to use anway.

What you have to realize here, is that most of Linux zealots are pretty clueless.

They think because they compile everything from scratch and spend countless hours building their system from scratch that it "is more powerful" than your average out of the box Linux distro.

Couldn't be further from the truth.

Just because Ubuntu is easy to setup and use out of the box, it doesn't make it any "less powerful" than any other distro out there, just the way things are done and operated is different.
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And Jesus, what's the whole issue with XFree86, Debian is really stuck in the past there...

0) Bootup exactly the way I want it, either in battery mode or in AC mode.
1) Spin the hard-drive down at exactly the time I specified, and enter laptop-mode.
2) I know exactly how my NICs are setup, and I've setup a firewall (shorewall), I'm completely stealthed from the net as far as GRC's Shields Up! test goes. Because I've set it up, I know exactly how my firewall works and what's happening.
3) I've got EXACTLY the packages I CHOOSE, no KDE, no Open Office, just stuff which I like.
4) Because I chose exactly which X server my system has,  I now have DRI enabled as a result, this was broken in XFree86 and some X.Org releases with the i810 driver (no Ubuntu installer could do with my i830M chipset). And Jesus, what's the whole issue with XFree86, Debian is really stuck in the past there...
5) Suspend-to-disk 2, fully working. No Ubuntu install can do that on my hardware.
6) Wireless WEP key support, Ubuntu just couldn't seem to handle this.

I can go on and on and on. The truth is Ubuntu, and any other distro, can't do everything for you. I bet anyone who "poo poos" Gentoo for being too difficult to setup, you'll run into loads of problems when you're setting up a laptop and you want it to actually behave like a laptop, and not a desktop, with Ubuntu. So why waste time working out what's already done for you and what's not, when you can do it all, get exactly what you want how you want. Enter Gentoo!
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Hum hum hum, I have a few issues with your linux world-view here :

You can control the startup on any distribution. You can use lycoris or mandriva and still setup an init system that works exactly the same as the gentoo one if you like, or you can create your own init system to do exactly what you want. The only difference is that gentoo, to some extent, forces you to do some of the setup yourself.

Also, just because a distro ships with a default firewall configuration doesn't mean that it makes it any harder to set up your own firewall configuration exactly the way you like it - gentoo has no default firewall configuration, and you set up your own, some other distros do have a default firewall configuratio, but you can still set up your own. Just because something is automatically set up for you in a particular way doesn't mean that you can't edit that setup to your needs. It isn't any harder at all to go from [default setup] -> [custom setup] than it is to go from [no setup] -> [custom setup]. It's just a mental issue - people see gentoo as somehow being less restrictive about these things, but this is open source, you can do anything you like from whatever base a distro chooses to use.

When it comes to the packages you choose, how many decisions did you make about the packages gentoo has decided to included in their "system" collection of packages (the ones installed during an "emerge system")? I've not installed gentoo for over 2 years now, but I'm pretty sure you're still lumped with what they think constitutes a sensible base system. But "No," you cry, "if you want to remove a package from the base system and use something else, you can simply emerge unmerge the package, and emerge the replacement! Or create a new profile!" Well here's a little secret: you can do exactly the same thing on any other distro. Ubuntu comes with stuff you don't want? Apt-get remove it, then. Just because a distro uses certain packages by default, doesn't mean you have to use what they suggest.

Similarly, you can use any X server you like on any distro. Don't be blinkered by what is installed by default.

Suspend to disk is, as far as I know, an entirely kernel-level technology, and has absolutely zero to do with your choice of distro, packages, init scripts, or anything else. If you can get it working in gentoo, you can get it working in ubuntu. If you are trying to use it on a default ubuntu kernel then no, it probably won't be supported, but if you're competent enough to patch it into your kernel source and build the required options in gentoo, you can do the same in ubuntu. Or any other distro. Same goes for wireless wep key support. Can't figure out how to do it using the ubuntu networking scripts? Use gentoo ones instead. Write your own. Hack some mish-mash together taking elements from multiple distros, if you want.

The point is, anything you can do on one distro, you can do on any other. You want to use a version of rpm from redhat 5.2 to manage your packages on slackware 10.1? Go right ahead. You want to use the gentoo method of installing a kernel on debian? Knock yourself out. Gentoo is not more powerful than any other distro - to my mind, the thing that gave gentoo its power, and the reason I used it for so long, was portage. I loved the way portage handled USE-flags, enabling your package manager to gracefully handle, for example, nethack with X support and nethack without X support as the same package. I would love to see that sort of functionality integrated into a binary package manager rather than a source one, but to be honest I don't see an easy way to do it.

Anyway, rant mode off, sorry if I sounded harsh in some parts there, I sometimes get a little carried away with these big posts
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