Edit: Unfortunately, the images originally included in this post are gone, because of hosting problems in late 2009. My apologies.
Short and sweet: I gave my little Thinkpad a proper Debian installation, this time in its native language. Now the little guy is running fast and furious, and is quite entertaining to watch.
That will keep me busy, learning all the ins and outs of Gnome, with everything in kanji. Installation took about an hour, which is less than it’s taking to install and update everything for XP on the Pavilion (more on that later). I still have a few issues to correct, but I’ve already uninstalled the dazed and confused network-manager package, Gnomebaker (no CD burner on this), and I plan on adjusting a few other things.
Anyway, it’s a fun thing to watch, this little 550Mhz machine chugging along with a replete desktop environment in place. Very enjoyable. 
But… a question? do you find gnome faster in Debian stable than in Archlinux?
I have to setup a desktop pc for a friend, and gnome is the only solution for him.
On a PIII 900 Mhz with 256 mb of ram, do you suggest Archlinux or Debian? I don’t use gnome, but i remember it was slow on old hardware…
It’s a good question too. I think if it’s going to be a desktop for a friend, I’d go with Debian, just because it’s going to be easier to manage and add software and so forth with Synaptic.
I’ll have to check though. I’m not sure how Gnome on Arch compares to this. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever even installed Gnome on Arch.
It’ll be a first.
By the way, I know you said Gnome was the only solution, but KDEmod is lovely, and a vast improvement over Gnome in any flavor, if you ask me. Just thought I’d mention it.