Mirroring my post to debian-desktop here:

Howdy, -desktop, Hopefully we can contain the flame to the other thread. desktop-base/7.0.0~exp2 has been accepted into experimental, for testing by y'all (and generally interested folks) for feedback and testing before pushing to unstable. I urge y'all to give it a try and provide feedback on issues that you may run into. You can overlay experimental on any unstable install, and install desktop-base by running: $ sudo apt-get -t experimental install desktop-base For more information on using experimental, check out the wiki[1]. If you would care to test out the plymouth bootsplash, here's the short version of how to get it running: 1) Install plymouth via apt ($ sudo apt-get install plymouth) 2) Set the theme to use `joy' ($ sudo /usr/sbin/plymouth-set-default-theme joy) 3) Edit the file /etc/default/grub, and add "splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT 4) update your initramfs ($ sudo update-initramfs -u) Here's the full list of changes from the version in unstable: desktop-base (7.0.0~exp2) experimental; urgency=low * Remove GConf defaults, they are not used anymore. * Remove the GDM3 settings, since the configuration format for GDM change again, yay. * Add a dconf file for the new-style GDM3 configuration. * Add a XML file describing the available resolutions for the background (for use with GNOME). * postinst: use a higher priority for the 1920x1080 background. * Cleanup postinst/prerm/postrm. * Add a new alternative: desktop-background.xml. * Use it from the gsettings override. * Reload gdm3 after installation/removal. * Drop old libgnome2-common hack. * Clean up an alternative that is no longer available. -- Josselin Mouette <joss@debian.org> Sat, 23 Jun 2012 23:28:15 +0200 desktop-base (7.0.0~exp1) experimental; urgency=low [ Paul Tagliamonte ] * Adding myself as a maintainer * We've got a new theme -- `joy' by Adrien Aubourg. Thanks, Adrien! - Theme added to backgrounds. - Theme added for Grub - Background changed for GDM3 - Theme added for KDM & changed that to default. - Theme added for ksplash & changed to default. * Standards bump to 3.9.3 * Pre-Dependency added for dpkg (>= 1.15.7.2~), since we use dpkg helpers in our preinst. * Add in Jonathan Carter's Plymouth theme. [ Jonathan Carter ] * Remove splashy theme since it's no longer available in archives [ Yves-Alexis Perez ] * Install emblem in the correct folder. -- Paul Tagliamonte <paultag@ubuntu.com> Sat, 23 Jun 2012 13:00:47 +0200 I thank all of you dearly for putting up with this, Paul [1]: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianExperimental