Anyone out there running Debian GNU/Linux 3.0? Just wondering, what’s your opinion of the system? Are there better free Linux systems?
I’m going to be running a stand-alone server that polls several serial ports for information, processes the information, then polls again, and so on. Real simple application, I don’t need much of an operating system (or add-on packages).
I think I’m going to use Mandrake 
http://www.linuxelectrons.com/staticpages/index.php?page=20031112135141721
I run Mandrake, not Debian, but I have yet to hear someone complain about running Debian on a server. It used to be that Debian was harder to install for newcomers, but they have come a long way in recent months.
For what you want to do, you could pretty much run any Linux distribution and have no worries. The advantages of the major distributions come down to support (Both have good community support, but Mandrake will, for a price, sell formal support) and updates.
Debian uses apt-get to provide free software upgrades, updates, installation. Mandrake uses urpmi. Define a source on the network, tell it what you want, watch it resolve dependencies and conflicts and install.
If you are running on a server that is important to your business in any way, use a major distribution that allows for simple package management. Use it for, at least, bug fixes and security updates.
Debian, Mandrake, Gentoo, SuSE, [Free|Net|Open]BSD - these all have very good patch management tools.
Having tried to be fair, though, I gotta say I love, love, love Mandrake Linux. I keep trying other distributions and I keep ending up right back at Mandrake’s door.
I like Mandrake, so another vote for that. But I cannot say how or if it is better than Debian, since I never tried that.
I run Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 r2 (stable/“Woody”) on a 2.4 kernel. This is the only distribution I have used, and installed it without assistance as a newcomer to Linux. It is extremely stable, and I definitely like the apt-get package installer. Unfortunately, Debian lags a bit behind with the packages which are included in the current stable release. As an example, 3.0 r2 ships with KDE 2.2.2. My system now is a bit of a mismatch, based on Debian stable, but with various upgraded libraries to support other software. So far it seems to be running okay.
For a base system without a lot of bells and whistles, you can’t get more reliability than a Debian install.
-FK