Eric, I have installed Debian and SuSE on two of my servers.
SuSE's YAST is great, I even got a full desktop from the get go, without much config. Not so with Debian. It took quite lots of fiddling between Debian's config parameters and the monitor and video card's drivers. Debian will have to do something about it. As I understand, they're slower in development and more conservative than other distros, so it'll take some time till they iron out the kinks. I asked you to elaborate on installation and whether you've encountered special problems. Being a Linux newbe from certain points of view, I need other technical people's experiences to learn.
Stefan, as far as the desktop/server parting ways, I just expressed some misgivings. Presently, they're still, more or less, together. I am afraid that if the software will be called Desktop and Server, we'll end up in the not too distant future with huge differences in price/capabilities. Presently a decent distro contains most of the staple servers: mail, Apache, etc. If things will go Windows' way, mail server and Apache and other servers will end up in the Linux Server package and the Desktop will be just that, an interface to run local applications with some network connectivity. A very BAD prospect indeed.
John.