I've just started playing with the Debian 9.3 + non-free / Cinnamon Dist.
I have this under consideration as an alternative to the LMDE environment. If any of you use the MINT environment you're probably aware that the LMDE option is their alternate system while their main system is Canonical/Ubuntu related. Me, being a fan of FOSS, I prefer to stay free of the Corporate Environment. Canonical is a corporate environment -- so they need to make money with what they do. And that's All Good,-- just not my Cup of Tea.
I'm experimenting with a new install of the Debian 9.3 + non-free / Cinnamon Dist. on my Research Box. The Research Question is: will this environment be a good alternate to the LMDE/MINT setup.
Only way to tell of course -- is to get Boots on the Ground! But, that's why I have a Research Box.
Notes
I have had the "stop job running" issue. 1 min, 30 sec delay to shutting down the system. Is this a Pottering Problem ? (systemd related ?). I see a thread on this on the other board so I'll just watch there to see if it looks like a solution is found.
Installer: when the installer completes it notes: ....."No other OS found on this machine so we are not going to mess around with Grub". Right: the other OS disks were disconnected during install. It seemed to me that when I installed an earlier DEBIAN (9.0) that the boot sequence of my LMDE/2 ( in SDC ) system was improperly modified. I had to re-install the O/S on that drive. It looks to me like what they want to do is setup GRUB on their drive so you can boot any O/S that is found on the box,.... there are 3 right now: SDA (Debian 9.3) SDC (LMDE/2) SDE (Mint/KDE 18).