Which Debian release are you talking about? Stable? Testing? Unstable? And although this is a gaming site, many members might have other criteria in mind for choosing a particular distro. You don't even need the latest "software" to play games, and advantages of using the absolutely latest kernel are often quite minimal unless you need a particular fix or a brand new driver. But you don't have to use the default kernel on Debian releases either.

Mind you, I don't think I've seen many reports on Debian causing problems for gamers on this site. Have I just missed them? Or are these Debian users simply proficient enough to fix these problems themselves? Debian doesn't exactly appeal to people new to Linux, unless they choose it based on ideology alone.

Disclaimer: Personally I've only used Debian on servers, and prefer a "better" OOTB experience on the desktop, but--as the word experience implies--this is purely subjective.

I personally don't use it (Kubuntu here), but I think that Debian testing is usable as a sort of rolling release without having to leave the world of apt-get. So that would be a reason to use it I guess.

I'm using Debian testing and it's not out of date. Debian testing in semi-rolling. It's being updated incrementally, except when Debian enters freeze period before the release. It did happen in the past that freeze was way too long, but they try to avoid it now.

So Debian testing offers a good balance of polish and stability while being up to date. Something like Arch introduces things way too early and you should be ready to deal with serious instability.

Ubuntu and Mint are actually more out of date than Debian testing, because they use periodic releases and they aren't rolling.

Shmerl, what kernel version does testing employ? Mint is currently 3.19 while I see Debian stable is only 3.16. I'm not trying to ostracize Debian users, in fact, this is a thinly veiled query as to Debian for a daily driver gaming system.

Current Debian testing has 4.3.5. You can see this here: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/linux

Quoting: AnxiousInfusionShmerl, what kernel version does testing employ? Mint is currently 3.19 while I see Debian stable is only 3.16.

Just FYI, Mint also offers 4.2 as an optional update. And it's easy to install via their update manager's Linux Kernels dialog.

@tuubi: And Debian stable also has backports if some need that. http://backports.debian.org

I once tried the Mint Debian edition, and was startled at how many programs I wanted to install that weren't in the repos. Back to Ubuntu.

Mint Debian edition isn't really being worked on properly. Better use Debian proper.

While I use Mint as my main OS, I did use Debian on my test machine, games ran pretty well and there was no performance difference in the games I tested. The OS is definitely rock solid, didn't have a single issue in the few weeks I had it installed, I felt more control on the OS compared to other distros based on it.