Debian itself is new to me. Your Elive caught my eye, though, and I tried it. Cool. Everything works nicely, and all the most important things are there.
But, the story, and the kudos, don't stop there.
My family is basically Microsoft oriented. The wife and kids have always been hesitant about experimenting with Linux, of any flavor.
My youngest son (age 15) simply fell in love with the Enlightenment desktop, and the window management system.
The kid installed Elive from the LiveCD, and was pretty happy with it, until he ran out of room on his hard drive.
I was wanting a larger hard drive anyway, since I never have enough storage room, so I put a 160 gig drive on that computer. Then, I installed Debian Etch from the network install CD.
The kid went to work, downloading, compiling, and installing Elive. It took several tries, but he got it right, and ran it for a few days. Then, he got the idea to upgrade something, and broke Elive.
He's a bit disappointed, and hasn't yet started rebuilding Enlightenment.
But, the great thing is, he's a dedicated Linux fan now, and he is learning development skills.
THAT, in and of itself, is great!!
Personally, I prefer the opensuse operating system. My own machine is kept near the cutting edge of development. I would love to see a SMART, Zypp or Yast repository set up for E17.
I'm not likely to go the trouble of compiling E17 real soon, but I really do like the window manager.
Thanks,