> If security or stability are at all important for you: install stable. period. This is the most preferred way.
> If you are a new user installing to a desktop machine, start with stable. Some of the software is quite old, but it's the least buggy environment to work in.
> Testing has more up-to-date software than Stable, and it breaks less often than Unstable. But when it breaks, it might take a long time for things to get rectified. Sometimes this could be days and it could be months at times. It also does not have permanent security support.
> Unstable has the latest software and changes a lot. Consequently, it can break at any point. However, fixes get rectified in many occasions in a couple of days [...]
> If security or stability are at all important for you: install stable. period. This is the most preferred way.
> If you are a new user installing to a desktop machine, start with stable. Some of the software is quite old, but it's the least buggy environment to work in.
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/choosing.en.ht...
> Testing has more up-to-date software than Stable, and it breaks less often than Unstable. But when it breaks, it might take a long time for things to get rectified. Sometimes this could be days and it could be months at times. It also does not have permanent security support.
> Unstable has the latest software and changes a lot. Consequently, it can break at any point. However, fixes get rectified in many occasions in a couple of days [...]
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable#What_are_some_best_pr...
> The most important thing is to keep in mind that you are participating in the development of Debian when you are tracking Testing or Unstable.
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Since we're comparing Debian with Arch, I'll add that Arch also has testing and staging repositories, in addition to the ones meant for normal usage.