I've been testing a new distro called ubuntu linux it's based off of Debian and comes with gnome 2.8, kernel 2.6.8. They have some interesting ideas in there. It's worth a look imo.
It uses the debian installer and does an excellent job at hardware detection for the three systmes I've installed it on. it's a great way to get a nice, current, clean, install of debian. I even had my total newbie neighbor install it and it only took him 20 minutes everything was working and he's a windows user :gasp: just thought i'd share.

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

i grabbed a copy of it but my system wont boot off of cd right now

it looks really interesting to me

the one thing ive heard was great was its speed how would you rate it in speed

I feels fast. I have it on a p3 500 w/ 768mb of ram. It is noticibly faster than the suse 9 install and it runs real nice on my friends laptop 300mhz 512 of ram.