* Updated the main post with latest versions of some distro/dev releases, removed references to X.Org and 2.6 being new technology that most distros don't have yet
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I actually downloaded the Hoary PR 1 LiveCD the other day, just to have a play and see how it was. It's not bad (for a Debian system :P). I didn't dig into it too deeply, but it booted up/went straight into gnome 2.10 nicely. I like having sudoers set up so you can sudo straight away... that was handy. Will have to play with it more in the future.
The only thing I didn't like was the lack of options in the Gnome menu... but since this distro is geared towards the beginner/intermediate.. I can see why the choices are limited. To each there own.