Debian is not lagging behind Slackware. I don't understand your complaint. Everything available in Slackware 8.0 is available in sid. (and then some)
I like both of them. My first distro was Slack 3.6, then I found hamm. I have tried a couple different versions of RH and SuSE but I prefer Debian or Slack. What is the problem with boot disks? I have an old potato CD (2.2 r 0) that I use to load a base system then use apt to install the desired version of Debian -- potato if maximum stability is required, sid for the bleeding edge, or woody for the middle ground. You don't need a woody boot disk to load woody. John
