I'm posting this from Ubuntu, which I'm trying via the LiveCD. It's a far better example of Linux than Knoppix, without techy distractions.

Apparently Ubuntu will do regular LiveCDs, not just for major releases. I hope that this happens and I think that we should link to them when we announce GNOME development releases. As well as being easier to install, it would be a very controlled testing environment that would be more likely to identify major problems unambiguously. Of course I'd like to see other distros offer this too.

My only negative impressions are superficial and easily fixable:

• Most applications are not using startup notification (the watch cursor), so it looks like things aren't working for a few seconds.
• The menu panel has no “Window Selector” drop-down. Instead, it uses the big horizontal “Window List” on the bottom panel. I guess this is more familiar to Windows users, but it doesn't work on Windows and it doesn't work in GNOME.
• I don't think it's easy to distinguish the brown frames on a dark-brown background. And I'd prefer if the Industrial theme half-shaded the frame titles on non-focused windows.

I still see no debian release schedule, time-based or otherwise.