[TriLUG] USB -> serial dongle that works with Linux?

[Greg Brown]

Does anyone know of such a beast?  I have seen one, years ago, in the
possession of someone at Oculan (Bill V. perhaps?).  Whoever had it the
device worked with OS X and other USB to 9 pin adapters did not.  I do A LOT
of Cisco work and as such I need to be able to connect my soon-to-be-mine
Linux laptop to said routers.

I'm thinking of ordering a Emperor Linux Kiwi, a very small laptop made by
Sony.

http://www.emperorlinux.com/systems/small/kiwi/

I have a choice of many flavors of Linux and I'm leaning towards Debian or
Ubuntu.  I install extra packages (nmap, wireless tools, etc) so I lean more
towards Debian just for the unfettered apt-get environment but Ubuntu is, of
course, Ubuntu and people seem to love it.  I haven't used it in a while but
when I did it seemed to work well.  One thing I really love about Debian is
the fairly automated upgrade process between releases.  Does Ubuntu upgrade
in the same way?

Debian or Ubuntu: which would you select?