Mepis would indeed be my first recommendation for a HD install. If only the main debian-based live CD's could unite, we'd get the top-notch hw detection of knoppix, modularity of morphix, excellent fonts and overall polish of mepis, and useful extra scripts and drivers of kanotix in one perfect package...

I am currently running mepis 2003.10, with Kano's kernel 2.6.8 and KDE upgraded to 3.3 from the regular debian pools. And it all works fine, which btw showcases debian's superior package management.