Yeah, I understand that. But I don't have any of the problems you're describing above, with my Debian + GNOME setup. I know others aren't so fortunate, though

Yeah, I understand that. But I don't have any of the problems you're describing above, with my Debian + GNOME setup. I know others aren't so fortunate, though, so it depends on what hardware you're running it on. And to be fair, the system definitely did take a little more low-level initial configuration, like compiling the binary nVidia drivers manually.