Consider the following

I have been eyeing Debian since 7.10 came out. Not because I am losing my faith in Ubuntu, but because I don't want all this flash and glam that 7.10 brought. I have decided that I will keep Ubuntu on my desktop for gaming. I will install Debian on my laptop for work. Debian is better for development purposes anyway and not trying to compete for best desktop, per se. It is looking to be the best development OS IMHO.

Anyway, I installed Debian in a VirtualBox VM just to make sure I could install it (it is just like the alternate Ubuntu install, only a bit more customizable) and it was easy. I chose a net install since my torrents kept getting reset. The net ISO is only like 163 MB. It took a good 2 or 3 hours to download and install everything. Even after that, GNOME wasn't installed, so I had to login to Xterm and sudo apt-get install gnome (that installed TWM also, which I am a big fan of). By the way, this is all done with Debian Etch. Will probably load it on my laptop this weekend after I back up.