So I was a bit unhappy that the software that Debian Sarge came with were so outdated (e.g. Gnome 2.8.3, no Xorg [only as backport] etc.), that I looked around on the web.
What I found was the advice that maybe Ubuntu might fit my requirements as a desktop linux on my Dell Latitude C840 laptop.
And indeed it looks quite good. Installation and final customization was done on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. Sound worked out of the box, NVidia binary driver worked after using my old xorg.conf file from Gentoo and disabling RenderAccel option.
Gnome 2.10, Gaim, Evolution, TightVNC, Firefox, Mono, SportsTracker, Smuxi, Evince, Tomboy, Xchat and so on.
Other than that its _brown_ everything looks good from a user view. Debian Developers will of course say that the packages are a mess, but as long as stuff works ok, I dont really care.