In the last couple of days I have been trying out Release Candidate 3 of Debian Jessie.

I used the x86_64 net install CD image.

There are some minor differences from the Wheezy net install, most notable of which is the ability to choose between several different desktops:

• Gnome
• LXDE
• XFCE
• Mate
• Cinnamon

There may be another one or two.

I chose Mate.

So far it's going OK. I have noticed a couple of things, one of which is annoying, the quiet volume of the installation voice, some of which are just observations.

These are:

• The aforementioned very low volume of the SpeakUp speech during the install.
• The mix of SysVInit and systemd.
• The flakiness of the lightdm greeter in sometimes not speaking. Nothing new there.

On the Dell Latitude D630 I installed it on Mate feels nice and snappy, although the speech is a bit clipped.

There is some problem with the internal wifi which causes many messages to be spat out during boot, but the Latitude has a switch so I am able to switch off the wifi until I have logged into the desktop.

The specs of the Latitude are:

• Intel Core 2 Duo.
• 2GHz Clock.
• 2GB RAM (with 2GB swap configured on Jessie).

Not exactly a screaming monster but nice and usable for programming and office stuff.

Orca has come a long way since Debian Wheezy, and I am looking forward to Jessie being released proper.

I'll totally document the accessible install process in a couple of days.

I have another Dell Latitude D630 with Trisquel Linux on it but I think this installation feels nicer.