Here’s an example from today: I read in the (excellent) Debian Weekly News (which also comes in a sensible text form in my email) about a new game that has just hit the “unstable” distribution. I run the brain-dead “apt-get update; apt-get install game” command, and try to run it, and it’s missing some library.
And here is where Debian shines: I check their bug tracker for the package, and not only has the problem already been reported in a clear manner, but the reporter included the workaround, and a fixed version of the package has already been uploaded by the maintainer, all within the past few hours.
Debian is geeky and exclusive enough to filter out the noise, while still being large enough so that I don’t have to think about stuff I don’t care about (and the geekiness ensures the decisions made fore me are usually correct). I love Debian.
