Potato is the current stable (version is 2.2r2) but a large number of packages are out of date. Woody is 'testing' now (not unstable any more) so I expect that it is now quite reasonable and will be 'stable' soon. If you don't need to install right away, I would recommend waiting a while and getting Woody instead. (though I doubt you would find a book with woody bundled in it, an older book should work just fine ; also there's this list :-)) HTH, -D