Mailing the story:

Recently Debian-based distributions have been making the headlines these past few months (i.e. Ubuntu, MEPIS, Linspire, Xandros) and taking away some of the glory from its root source, so I decided to see if I had the chops to figure out how to take a stock Debian desktop install and tweak it to function on par or better than the competition. Proudly, I can report, I have accomplished what I have set out to do and now have a solid workhorse multimedia PC that has made me a convert.