IMHO, MX-15 has got XFCE right.
http://www.mepiscommunity.org/...

As good a manual as I've seen for a Linux distro.
http://www.mepiscommunity.org/...

It's not exactly hard to upgrade the kernel in debian to the latest version. The Liquorix Project, http://liquorix.net/ , has a debian sid repository which works in Jessie. The MX / MEPIS Community Repositories have those repackaged for Wheezy.

Running debian stable, or even testing, on the desktop has always required some backports. That's why all the debian derivatives like Ubuntu, Mint, Antix, PCLinuxOS, and the rest are popular.

I wouldn't suggest you upgrade the kernel on your production server without good reason - but why would you be running Chrome on your server anyway?

While commercial beekeepers have been having trouble with their bees, here in Florida we've had more wild bees than ever before. They're building hives in residential areas - in attics, in backyard trees, under manufactured homes, in walls of abandoned homes, etc. Commercial beekeepers don't want these bees because it's more expensive to test them to determine whether they are "Africanized" than to buy new, so they are usually killed by exterminators. If bees were truly as threatened as the headlines claim, wouldn't at least some beekeepers be collecting these hives instead of homeowners having to pay hundreds of dollars to have them killed?

In 1972 when I was a H.S. Sophomore, my High School (Cleveland Heights/University Heights High School) acquired a PDP-8e with 8k core memory & 4 teletype terminals using paper tape for program storage. It ran a version of DEC Basic. That took 20 minutes to load from paper tape after a minimal boot loader had been keyed in with the toggle switches on the front panel. Fortunately the machine was very stable because a crash meant you probably couldn't get it rebooted that class period.

Computer Science was an 9 week elective class which I took in 1973. After the mandatory "Hello World", branching, subroutine & data statement lessons, I remember having an assignment to program a craps game. I also wrote a program that punched out words on the paper tape that one of the candidates for Student Council used for mini election banners.

With only about 1.2k of ram left for each terminal after Basic was loaded and no disk storage, our programs were necessarily short & simple - but we did learn programming basics.

Where i got a 1998 CD set with Slackware, TurboLinux, Debian & RedHat. None of which I could get working well on my anemic hardware.
The drivers for my CDRom had to be compiled into the kernel, so I had to make floppies from Windows 95 to install a barebones system that could compile the CD drivers before I could get X installed...

In 2000 when I first got DSL I re-purposed an old 386 to be my first router with Coyote Linux.

Mandrake from 2001 to 2004 -> Ubuntu in 2005 -> SimplyMEPIS 2006 - present. With my music server running running Slackware, then Vector, then MEPIS With trials along the way of Antix, Debian, Puppy, Damn Small, Feather, Knoppix, Zenwalk, Gentoo & probably some I've forgotten.

The energy source for all of the other choices is originally solar. Wind, Hydro, Hamsters are all just conduits for energy that originally came from Sol. Geothermal is from the product of another sun that went Supernova.

Robins Love Brazilian Pepper Berries, and fly around drunkenly after consuming them. Have you ever seen a robin come in for a landing on a wire & miss? Or catch it with one claw and dangle underneath? Common sights on Sanibel when the berries are ripe.

BankAtlantic, a florida bank. I never tried to download more than a month's worth before, so I just tried it. Downloaded 4 years worth with no fuss. Had the choice of OFX, QFX, QBO & CSV

at 5'11" tall and 1187 miles from my birthplace that's slightly over a million multiples of my height from my birthplace. My brother in Thailand is well over 7 million multiples of his height from his birthplace. Strange selection of distance options...

It's not only the most comfortable bed to sleep on, the wave action makes certain other activities easier & more pleasant as well.
I love waking up slowly on a day off with my fiancee in our waterbed...