I was pretty much dragged kicking and screaming into using Vector. I kept trying to get Debian to run X on this computer, for about 12 hours after this last post, but nothing worked. So I bit the bullet and made my self at home... and now I am quite comfortable with Vector. The fact is that I don't have nearly as many readily available options as i am used to having, I'm discovering that the options that I have are more than satisfactory.
The problem that I was having getting fluxbox to install was finally fixed by clicking on the "update" button on the gslapt window. I still have some problems with fluxbox. I'm used to taking my fluxbox configuration text files that I've been using for a the past year and a half, copying them into ~/.fluxbox, and presto, fluxbox is set up just the way I like it, but because of different supporting software, that's not working.
On the other hand, for what I'm using this desktop for, KDE is turning out to be pretty good, so fluxbox may not be an issue. Eventually, if I decide to use fluxbox, I'll simply reedit my configuration files.
I was also happy to discover that, while I can't seem to get gnome without compiling or buying the 2 CD set, I can get the libraries necessary to install my favorite gui-based editor, gedit. Gedit is the number one reason why I would always install gnome libraries, and now that I've got it running, I may be able to install some of my other favorites like gthumb.
And again, the speed and performance are exceptional. I'm pretty happy with Vector Linux.