The dumbing down of the Firefox has been an ongoing process. With every update Mozilla hides options that were in previous versions. Just like Ubuntu and Gnome, the simpler something is the easier it is for the so called "normal" people to use. God forbid you actually want to change the default options. Btw Google Chrome totally sucks, the UI is like something a child's browser would use. Every time I have it import my Firefox settings it stops loading pages. Pages load way faster in Firefox, they both start up in the same amount of time. Plus Chrome eats ram like a kid at Halloween.
There are no where near the amount of extensions for it that Firefox has. What Mozilla needs to do is leave the UI alone and work on fixing the known bugs and issues.

Debian works on any of the Eee PC models.
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC

On my 701 it boots in 20 seconds to lxde, wireless just works, suspend works.On my wife's 1000HE everything also works.