I haven't come across Orange, Calif.-based eRacks in awhile, but I followed a link over there today and was re-acquainted with its suprisingly full line of systems that do just about anything you want and ship with a multitude of Linux and BSD operating systems, including Debian, Ubuntu and CentOS, along with Free-, Open- and NetBSD.

They also offer Fedora, Gentoo, PCLinuxOS, Mint, Mandriva, Puppy (who else ships boxes running Puppy??), Mepis, OpenSuse, SLED, RHEL, Xandros and even Windows 7 if you want it.

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One of the main reasons not to run Debian Stable is that you have newer hardware that doesn't respond well to the older packages in the release. For those with Intel Sandy Bridge and other newer chips, the X server as it is packaged in Squeeze can be a problem, which can be solved by running Testing or Sid, or now with X in Squeeze Backports.

This is a great thing. While many users prefer Testing or Sid, or the six-month releases of Ubuntu (or Arch, or your favorite often-released or rolling distro ...), it's nice to be able to run Debian's stable distribution on your newer hardware.

I'm doing this, in a way, with my newer Liquorix kernel -- version 2.6.38 instead of the 2.6.33 that ships with Squeeze. With the newer kernel, my Lenovo G555's sound chip behaves much better.

At this point in the Squeeze cycle, a newer kernel is now available in Squeeze Backports (and currently 2.6.39), so Squeeze-running users can get a newer kernel directly from Debian. And now they can get a new X server, too.

I hope this newer X server in Squeeze Backports allows many more people to run Debian Stable, and I once again thank the Debian Developers responsible for continuing to make Squeeze -- and Debian in total -- even better than it already is.

This brings up a question: Should you run Debian Stable?

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