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What can I run on Stable?



Recently I tried Testing (twice), only to be bitten by bugs in Gnome 2.8.0 that
caused metacity and gnome-panel to fail to load on login. I spent days trying
to fix the problem, but finally gave up.

Then I installed Unstable, only to have it fail to install the boot loader at
the end of the installation.

Then I gave up on Debian and installed Fedora 12. Not only did package
management suck, but I got bitten by the same bug in Gnome 2.8.0 that happened
in Testing.

I wiped the hard disk yet again and installed the recently released OpenSuse
11.2. Sure enough, it uses Gnome 2.8.0 and I got hit by the same bug yet again.

I do not know what it is that I am doing - configurations, installed apps, or a
combination thereof - but Gnome 2.8.x and I are not destined to be buddies. It
would take weeks of painstaking work to sleuth down exactly what is causing it.

For my latest effort I installed OpenSuse 11.1. It uses Gnome 2.24, and I
haven't had any problems with Gnome so far. However, package management is
atrocious. 

I absolutely require the following:

Gnome desktop (yes, I've tried all the others)
OpenOffice.org 3.1.1.4 (fixes bugs in the Math module)
Scribus 1.3.5.1 (I need the features)
Adobe Reader 9.1
Okular (any reasonably recent version)
praat (for speech analysis)
support for my bluetooth mouse and headphones

OpenSuse 11.1 managed the bluetooth devices (which Testing never could), but I
could never get OOo 3.1.1.4 or Adobe Reader installed. The rest of the apps
installed but crashed on launch. It took me a full day of labor to get just
this far. 

I come from Ubuntu, where all of the above can be installed without issue.
However, Scribus does not play well with Ubuntu because the Ubuntu team has
taken liberties with the Qt 4.5 libraries. The Scribus people recommend Debian,
Fedora or OpenSuse.

So here I am, considering Debian once again. 

Can some kind user of Lenny tell me if the above apps can be installed so they
actually work? Is anyone using a bluetooth mouse or headphones with Lenny?

I apologize for sounding negative. The past ten days have been majorly
frustrating.


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