call it somewhere in between fedora core and gentoo--- you've got thousands of apps ready with a simple apt-get install
one of the few things i hated over redhats was that you had to search for dependencies yourself. that can be a challenge sometimes.
sure, downloading sources and compiling them can be fun but sometimes faster uptime is better than going through all the motions (especially when its not mission critic to have the system performance-tuned!
so is debian excellent? yes! :)