Well, when you started this thread I was fearing a quite long flame
with everybody jumping at you with "if you don't like <foo> you're
free to some and help improving it"....which is definitely what
happens too frequently when some users report issues that can't often
be pointed to a given package.
Indeed, the thread is really interesting to follow and already shows
that big efforts are made to improve those parts who are still not as
polished as they could be (or "appear" polished....many things you
pointed to be user-friendly in Ubuntu could perfectly be very dirty
hacks..:-))
I must say I've been pleasantly surprised as well. Debian developers have been quite responsive to my concerns... I must say that this is one area Debian definitely outshines Ubuntu - the developers are FAR more responsive. The choice seems really quite simple for someone who has an interest in improving the system - and it's really the opposite of what I expected. For Ubuntu, the user community/MOTU may be quite open, but core development takes place in a very closed-source-like fashion... Debian, however, is open and free in every sense of the word - thank you for staying that way.
Well, we should ask users of testing but my feeling is that this goal
is kinda well achieved.
I have been using testing, and I figured I'd offer my comment on this. While testing works pretty well, there is still no security updates. I've since gone to unstable, though, to stay up on Debian development to date...