I'm a recent convert.

I have expererience with multiple RH/Redora and Suse.

In each case they would install easily but be painful
to maintain and install new stuff. I got to the point of
conflicting libraries when I wanted to install something
new that I'd rather install a new box from scratch once
a year and migrate all my stuff to it, than upgrade.

I tried raw Debian in the past and the install and setup
was too painful. And the various "stable" apps were too
old.

Now it seems to have all come together. Mepis has a great
installer and apt-get will pull in anything I need. Synaptic
allows me to visually figure out what is there, what I don't
need, and apply the changes. The baseline environment (KDE,
Open Office, various media players) is recent enough that
I don't feel the need to go bleeding edge.

It's a keeper.