[Serusers] debian question

Hi! The question a little bit off topic, but I'm sure you canhelp me :-) Usually, I used Redhat, but as they stopped their free update service, I'm looking for a new platform. In older postings, most people recommend debian, that's why I want to give it a try. The debian homepage tells me, that security updates will only be available for the stable release, so I wanted to use stable. But stable does not support mysql 4, which is required for serweb. So, what are your common practices to overcome such problems (the trade off between stable/old software and unstable/new software)? Do you use Debian testing? Do you use just the base packages on stable and compile mysql 4 yourself? Do you use backports or do you mix stable/testing? thanks, Klaus