I'm burning the Debian Squeeze Alpha 1 live image to DVD

Out of curiosity, did you do this? how did you find it? I'm eager to try, but wanted to check on others' experiences before attempting the massive download...

I did:

http://www.insidesocal.com/click/2010/03/debian-squeeze-alpha-1-live-dv.html

The live environment for Debian Squeeze ran extremely well on my laptop. It looked like you could install from the live image (although I believe this just invokes the usual Debian installer).

Squeeze by itself, forgetting all of my problems with in an in-place upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze — which I won't be attempting again until things are more worked-out development-wise — Squeeze appears to be in terrific shape.

The thing about Debian releases, good or ill, is that they come out so relatively infrequently that there are numerous changes from one release to the next.

From my experience, I wouldn't hesitate to do a new install of Squeeze, and I can say that the live DVD is definitely worth downloading, burning and using to check for compatibility and to see just what's in the release.

This Debian Live image is quite different than those for Lenny and Etch. For one thing, it's not constrained by the size of a CD, so the full environment appears to be there. And the biggest thing, in my opinion, is the availability of a PowerPC live image - something I've never seen from Debian Live, and something rare from any distribution, most of which have either always ignored PowerPC or have grown to ignore it over the years.

In my experience, Debian is great on PowerPC Macs, especially the G4/466 on which I've run Etch.

Overall, Debian Live is a great tool to have - and I thank all those involved with it for the improvements they've brought to the project in the Squeeze era.