UPS

[Tom Allison <tom@tacocat.net>]

I'm in need of a massive hardware upgrade...

I have UPS's that don't work for more than a minute -- dead battery.   
But they are "dumb" boxes and want to replace them with smarter units  
rather then getting new batteries.  And I know Debian is a slightly  
different OS in that it doesn't really "do" the vendor binaries.  Is  
there something that is well supported and easily installed under  
Debian that I can use.  Years ago I purchased a Belkin UPS and found  
out later one that the binaries don't work with all the UPS and linux  
combinations -- any one want to guess what side of that line I fell on?

So -- what's a working combination of UPS and software?  What to avoid?