What is meant by "stable" and "conservative"?

[lindsey]

What is meant by "stable" and "conservative"? I hear these adjectives get used a lot in reference to Debian. Does it translate to less buggy, less crashes and lagging behind in out-of-the-box support of new hardware?

I noticed of all the distros for example, that my Wacom Graphics Tablet couldn't plug and play with Debian.

[devils casper]

I have never heard about Debian Conservative. It has three distributions only.

stable, testing and unstable.

Check details here under title Distributions.

[coopstah13]

casper, i don't think OP was referring to the 3 distributions of debian, I think OP was describing debian in itself

Stable meaning the software has been out a long time and most bugs have been eliminated

Conservative meaning upgrading newer versions of packages is kept to a minimum, to preserve stability and ensure a working system

That being said, i use a rolling release and haven't experienced much in the instability front

[lindsey]

casper, i don't think OP was referring to the 3 distributions of debian, I think OP was describing debian in itself

Stable meaning the software has been out a long time and most bugs have been eliminated

Conservative meaning upgrading newer versions of packages is kept to a minimum, to preserve stability and ensure a working system

That being said, i use a rolling release and haven't experienced much in the instability front

Thanks for following my meaning.

Does this mean packages do not benefit from as many upgrades? This seems a big price to pay for stability.

[GNU-Fan]

Does this mean packages do not benefit from as many upgrades? This seems a big price to pay for stability.

This depends on your needs, of course.
Personally, I regularly face two common scenarios where I want the setup not to change for as long as possible.

The first case is servers, where instability can get you in trouble both legally and financially, especially with maintenance contracts at hand. Experiments are better to be done elsewhere. The only updates I want to see here are those who fix security issues.

The second case is whenever I built desktop systems to newbie users. They already have a hard time to learn finding their way the first time. To get updates which change the look or the layout of the menus/buttons even minimally is a disaster to them. I don't want to give them this sensation too often.

[shtromm]

Does this mean packages do not benefit from as many upgrades? This seems a big price to pay for stability.

Not really - One the side Debian's stable version (Lenny) does contain some quite old pieces of software (OpenOffice 2.x instead of 3.2.1, Gimp 2.4.x instead of 2.6.9, KDE3 instead of KDE4 ect.), but no one hinders you install the more recent version manually for tools you really need, what I do.

In the case of KDE I am quite happy to stay with KDE3 - to be frank: KDE4 is IMHO a strong argument for Gnome.