The nearest Debian distro I've used is Ubuntu. I recently discover this elive version with compiz and I think it's just great. It runs like hell in my old ThinkPad X40, 1.3 GHz Intel PIII, 1.2 Gb RAM and full Intel chipset.
Effects work just fine, no bug or error has come up since I installed this evening about 2 pm (It's 8:17pm now).
Congrats to the team!!