[linux-audio-user] debian / ubuntu

[greg]

Ok, hopefully this will not set off a flame war :)
Basically my experience with ubuntu has been that when it works right
and you stay in the lines, it's great.  Fixing problems or doing
something unorthodox occasionally involves a touch of smoke and mirrors.
Just for fun I thought I would give regular Debian a try.  I just
installed Debian on another machine.  It's in the process of upgrading
to "testing".  I thought the documentation for Debian was very
straight-forward, but perhaps scary to the text-file phobic, but that's
where I always ended up in Ubuntu.
Questions:
- is that an accurate debian / ubuntu difference, what else is there?
Basically the only sense i've gotten is that ubuntu is friendly, debian
is balanced(?) and gentoo is for freaks. I kid.
- is testing a good choice?  From the description I am expecting
current, but not bleeding edge packages and a machine that is unlikely
to blow up.
- will it be "easier" to do a machine based on compile-installs etc and
not just relying on apt-get with debian than ubuntu.  So therefore might
it be easier to transition to a realtime machine.  For my purposes
edgy's 18ish kernel hasn't failed me yet, but hey.

wow that turned out to be long but it's some stuff I'd been curious
about.