Debian is not just slow, but slow and irregular with their releases. There's nothing that says "about every 2 years" or "let's try for once every 18 months" or something like that. It happens when it happens. That can be kind of maddening. With Ubuntu you have the choice to either grab on to the every-six-months version, or use the long term support version.
The "just use unstable/experimental" thing is fine if you have no memory of really big transitions... libc5 -> glibc6, for instance, caused a lot of breakage. There are no guarantees that that kind of thing won't happen again. Using unstable is fine if you're a hacker and don't mind helping out when something goes awry - I'm glad people do that, and did it myself at one time. But if you're not in a position to drop what you're doing to go chase down some obscure bug in a package, then perhaps unstable should be approached with caution.
Ubuntu and Debian really aren't that different - file layouts, tools... pretty much everything is the same. Which is good... it makes Ubuntu Debian + money for usability improvements + a more unified vision + a regular release schedule.
Oh, another thing I like with Ubuntu is that I can run exactly the same code on my laptop and server, which has proved to be quite convenient more than once.
Debian is fantastic though... if Ubuntu ever falters, I will go back without a second thought. They get a ton of things right and do great work.
The "just use unstable/experimental" thing is fine if you have no memory of really big transitions... libc5 -> glibc6, for instance, caused a lot of breakage. There are no guarantees that that kind of thing won't happen again. Using unstable is fine if you're a hacker and don't mind helping out when something goes awry - I'm glad people do that, and did it myself at one time. But if you're not in a position to drop what you're doing to go chase down some obscure bug in a package, then perhaps unstable should be approached with caution.
Ubuntu and Debian really aren't that different - file layouts, tools... pretty much everything is the same. Which is good... it makes Ubuntu Debian + money for usability improvements + a more unified vision + a regular release schedule.
Oh, another thing I like with Ubuntu is that I can run exactly the same code on my laptop and server, which has proved to be quite convenient more than once.
Debian is fantastic though... if Ubuntu ever falters, I will go back without a second thought. They get a ton of things right and do great work.