[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] soyabean:
Don't worry. Mine has been redone for several times, really pushing hard on debian. Just be careful not to do "apt-get dist-upgrade". Someone seems to have hinted this somewhere that this may break your system and you have to start over again. The same also seems to happen to the eeepc. A safer way is to play some magic on how and what packages are installed. This is how i set the package repositories: edit /etc/apt/resources.list by replacing the old entries with these:

#stable
deb http://debian.neilandtheresa.co.uk/ titchy/
deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free
#testing
deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
#unstable
deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free

Next you adopt a "policy" of package installation, or "apt-pinning" in debian terms. This is extremely simple. Create a new file /etc/apt/preferences and write down the following (for example):

Package: *
Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 1000
Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 800
Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 600

Finally do a "apt-get update". In doing so you will install the "stable" releases by default, or the "testing" ones if they're not found in the stable repositories, or the "unstable" ... now you get the idea. You can find out more at http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-apt-get.en.html , in particular 3.8 onwards.

it's not MY guide. The material all comes from http://neilandtheresa.co.uk/Blog/Titchy Linux/ . You should thank him and not me. ;) Also take a look at http://sumoudou.org/index.php?cmd=Non-Sumou , also a very cool source of info

To many users it is, but to me it's a bit too heavy for uni due to the bottlenecks on the limited RAM (especially obvious for Unis w/ 64MB) and the slow read/write speed on the SD card interface.

Icewm is very basic only in its appearance. You can practically change almost everything and every behavior in a simple manner. You can do so by copying the default settings to your home directory, e.g.

cd

mkdir .icewm

cd /usr/share/icewm

cp preferences keys menu winoptions toolbar ~/

cd ~/.icewm

nano preferences ... nano keys ... nano winoptions.....

You can also find a lot of useful tips and howtos online, like these ones:

http://www.osnews.com/story/7774/IceWM_-_The_Cool_Window_Manager

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/IceWM

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/autorun-in-icewm-25607/

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-desktop-74/icewm-howto-create-a-googlebar-591760/

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=110416

You don't have to get all the settings done altogether. You desktop will start to "grow" when you know more and more.

There are many other desktop/window managers you can use. The cool thing is you can run them on the Uni in exactly the same way as on laptops and PCs.

Another important reason to choose a lightweight desktop/window manager is that you can reserve more RAM for running heavy programs, just like firefox.

Besides icewm, i would also recommend: gpe-matchbox, openbox w/ matchbox-panel, fluxbox+gpe/matchbox, e16, e17. Perhaps GPE (apt-get install gpe) is a good starting point if you are so used to the WM interface. It turns you Uni into a debian machine with a palmtop interface.

One more trick (and is fun to do!) is to experiment different match-and-mix of

window managers

, which take care of how program windows are displayed and how they behave,

desktop managers

, which take care of the desktop background/functions/decorations, and "panels", which give your a useful toolbar just like in ms windows and mac os x. The possibilities are virtually unlimited. Furthermore there are some "secret weapons" once you get the hang of bash commands. wmctrl is a really good one. Think that the Uni is just a (tiny) laptop.

You can surely run it. Firefox is renamed as iceweasel in debian. So just apt-get install iceweasel. It is indeed very powerful, a bit slow to launch yet quite smooth to run then, but not without some limitations: no flash (yet), no addons, memory-demanding. I've heard Fennec (a fork of firefox) is under active development for the maemo platform. Hopefully it will come to debian too.

Well, even the browsers on wm can't do "everything" :)

Still there are some good choices if you are doing more simple browsing, e.g. dillo, icehamster, midori, galeon, epiphany, kazehakase.

I also use lynx and w3m a lot in the console. The fastest and cheapest way.