You kind of gave away the answer yourself: "i personally like debian's slow cycle - i don't like to upgrade if i can help it. my son, on the otherhand, likes to try the new stuff whenever possible." in these matters, its best to let personal preference reign. Most linux distros out there are "good", specially the major ones anyways. it really just comes to what you really need and where you're willing to compromise. For example... I tried Sabayon Linux, and Ati driver support has been somehow tweaked by them (dont even need to install it separately, it installs automatically) so I get 2000 fps with glxgears, while I get 1000 in Ubuntu 9.04 without tweaking it myself (just comparing default installs). I prefer Ubuntu for its other aspects and have decided to stick with it instead of going the Sabayon/Gentoo route. Maybe its a bad idea, maybe its a good one, I cant keep doubting myself, because unfortunately with so many distros and all the little differences its so hard to be sure! Just pick what you like best and are most comfortable with, and if that distros ever goes down the drain, switch! test new distros every six months/1 year. its really the way to go! Keep one stable installation, and have another partition for test driving distros! :) Ive actually found Linux Mint to be so much better on my laptop than vanilla Ubuntu 9.04, so i'm going to get Mint 7 (based on Ubuntu 9.04) as soon as it comes out! :) oh and the only question that hasnt been answered yet (i think) is about the documentation of debian vs ubuntu. im no expert there :s so ill skip that. ~fez