Id just like to say thankyou.. this discussion is actually one of the best ive seen comparing distros... and this is something i maybe spending a lot more time in dealing with in the future.. I like parts of debian.. the distupgrade so you all of a sudden have a new distro, but with all your old stuff still there (if it keeps working) but as mentioned.. stuff seems older than in something like redhat.. ive always used, and liked redhat.. its worked.. there are the odd issue where they decide to do things differently to everyone else.. but dealing with those situations are few and far between. Im thinking ill try a fedora upgrade on my server (im using the term "server" fairly broadly as its not mission critical other than it being my border router / firewall / webserver for my home connection) and hopefully it wont break too much. Maybe easter some stage.. gives me some time to fix the broken bits.