Provisos/comments:

Opera's shite.
Kopete is great for regular IM work, but hopeless for IRC. Yes, X-Chat will be required.

The install is truly fabulous.

It couldn't find a working Audigy2 driver, though; the emu10k1 driver it installed produced no noise.

I like the way it gives you two desktops by default *with different coloured backgrounds*. This is an excellent visual cue.

I couldn't play a DVD out of the box.

I concur with your overall assessment; it's very polished and there's been a lot of work done here.