Updated Debian 9: 9.7 released
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Normally I run OpenBSD everywhere but I've got a Debian laptop that's nice to use.
It's great to try other systems! Even if you're die-hard in favor of something, trying something else will enrich your appreciation or even make you fall in love with it again. Or it could make you realize you've been missing out on some things that are actually pretty cool. And if you're a hacker then maybe you'll just add the missing features. :-)
I've been using OpenBSD for almost 20 years so it's sort of a lifelong friend. Even something as amazing as pledge/unveil don't bring me back to that "first time" magic, although I gotta say they bring me pretty close.
Some 3rd party software that comes with Debian is newer than that in OpenBSD, and sometimes it's the other way around. Some things are nicer in Debian, like the GUI wifi selection is pretty handy. OpenBSD has excellent wifi support under the hood but no paint job if that makes sense. So at least for a laptop that I'm carrying all over the place, Debian's wifi is pretty great.
You should try Debian! And OpenBSD, and Haiku, and ReactOS, or whatever has your curiosity. These days it's comically easy to try a new OS. Even if computers weren't historically cheap, they're so overpowered that you can emulate them and run multiple virtual machines on a single box. "There's never been a better time than now!"
I'll probably try VOID Linux next. Definitely give Debian a spin.
It certainly is. But it isn't a GUI, which is what OP said.
I run stable for servers and testing for workstations. I don't use it on the desktop much anymore, just my secondary computer at work for things that don't require windows; and for VMs at home. I don't recall any bumps in the road on testing in a long time, but I guess that all depends on which packages you use and their maintainers.
Security-related updates from unstable usually get promoted to testing fairly quickly (within a few days), depending on the severity of the vulnerability and drift between the version of the package in testing and unstable. Regardless, you can usually easily install security updates from unstable as soon as they get uploaded.
Backports (https://backports.debian.org/) can relieve some of the age complaints in stable, but packages are pretty selectively included, and some packages (such as KDE or GNOME releases) are never put into backports.
If you run stable it just runs, you don't have to do a thing, until the next update (1.5 years or so) and you can plan in advance to have a down-day.
If you run testing you'll have a bit more admin to deal with, whenever this or that changes, and you have to configure the newest and greatest. And you can't wait either, because changes are mixed with security updates.
'stable' is the long term release and what you'd choose if you want a minimum of hassles. The packages are usually months (when the stable release initially occurs) to a couple of years old(at the tail end of the release just before the next stable comes out.) It's pretty much like a major OS X or Windows release from a stability standpoints and the .1... .n releases occur (i.e. like the just released 9.7) pretty regularly for at least a couple/few years after the .0 release with security and minor bug fixes. Great for servers and desktops where you want a minimum of drama.
'testing' is fairly stable (in general... Debian 10 testing has been anything but stable for me the last 6 months compared to testing leading up to previous releases) Generally, it's been integration tested (you shouldn't experience broken package dependencies) but there can and will be issues with the individual packages themselves. If you don't mind occasionally diagnosing and fixing issues, this can be a pretty good compromise between stability and package freshness. Good for development servers and desktops. Now that we're in a freeze (for Debian 10) it's reasonably safe to start looking toward testing for desktops that aren't 'mission critical' as most of the major gyrations are done and they're tightening it up for release. When Debian 10 is released, you can just change from 'testing' to 'stable' and you'll hop off the roller coaster for a while. (Note: one thing that might annoy you here is that in testing package can and do pop in and out of existence from time to time. Not frequent, but it does happen)
'sid' is the bleeding edge. You may have broken dependencies and non-functional packages. Pretty much anything can happen here... all sid guarantees is that the package built as this is where a lot of development testing occurs. Packages pop in and out of existence regularly. Not recommended for your daily driver but good for seeing what's coming and testing things out. Regular breakage will occur.
I, too, have found testing to be somewhat unstable over the past 6 months or so. Nothing terrible or unusable, but annoying nonetheless.
I generally keep my servers (and Raspberry Pis) on stable, but I'll likely be moving them to testing soon, since it's in a stabilization freeze.
Stable is very stable, but packages are often years old and lacking features you might expect from fedora.
Sid breaks occasionally but unlike testing, Sid actually gets fixed rapidly because the fixes don't have to go through as much review.
There's tons of churn with dozens of packages being updated daily on Sid, whereas stable is great if you're happy with the feature set offered.
Backports are hit and miss.
But having said that, I'm a BSD person partly-moved to Debian and I never came strongly into it, before systemd deployed so my rc.d wishes were never met, so I didn't go to devuan first.