new to debian

["Terry A. Bowling" <terry.bowling@verizon.com>]

Hello,

I've been running Redhat on my Digital PWS600 and 433's for about a year
now.  I'm currently using RH7.1 with the stock 2.4.3 kernal and I'm
pretty sick and tired of the RPM hell and Redhat's sluggishness to move
forward.  So at an associate's suggestion, I've downloaded Debian
2.2r4.  But I have some questions:

1. Reading the Install Docs on 2.2r4's disk 1, it notes that kernel
2.4.x is not officially supported and does not come with KDE2 or
XFree4.x.  Is this documentation simply outdated - maybe from the
release of 2.2r1?  Or is this still the case.  These are three items I
consider somewhat important.

I know, I can update it all later, but there are only so many hours in
the day.  I would like to get it all in one shot on one cd.

2. How well are debian packages updated.  I use Mandrake x86 at home and
I love the fact that Mandrake Cooker has multiple revisions new software
practically on the day they are released.  I understand that especially
on the alpha platform I need to be more patient, but I hope Debian is
not as sluggish as RedHat.

Thanks in advance... Terry