zsh's behavior is a little different here than most other shells. Other shells, like bash, try to expand the wildcards. If they cannot expand to anything they pass the literal string (containing the wildcards) to the application instead. But zsh does not do that (well, there is an option for that, to do it or not). The zsh will print that error and not perform the command. You can override that by escaping the wildcard, if you really want it passed to the application. In this case you do since you want the other side shell to expand it. So use:
scp remotehost:\*.txt .
This is actually the correct behavior, since if you did have some local *.txt files in your home they would be expanded to a name that might not exist on the remote. That's not what you want.
Debian has a release maturity model, where Unstable, Sid, is where all the new stuff goes in. If it sticks, then Unstable becomes Testing, in which nothing can be added during testing. This typically lasts 1.5 - 2 years. If no problem at that point, Testing becomes the new Stable release.
Security updates are made to Stable first, then to Testing.
Debian Stable is notoriously stable, and notoriously behind the times, but very reliable for servers.
Ubuntu came along and said: we take Debian Unstable, make it more stable, add all the latest gadgets, drivers, etc, and release it.
Ubuntu then works at the security updates, package updates, etc, for their Ubuntu releases.
Note that I gladly use Ubuntu on the desktop, but I stick to Debian Stable for servers.
Makes sense?
Best Answer
Glob is an alternate name for "Pathname Expansion" as described in the dash (sh) or bash manual (ksh calls it "Filename Expansion"). It is clearly defined in the manuals.
Wildcard is a term for the same concept (one character is used as a pattern standing for several posible characters) but it is not so clearly defined. Wildcard characters are
*and?used in globbing.