beyond jessie

Dear developers,

I have been happily using debian for years and now for the first time 
seem to have encountered something like 'incompatibility problems' that 
I had never had before.

Since all this is new to me, I was beginning to wonder where debian is 
heading. We have dozens of desktops to choose from but hardware 
compatibility seems to be a real issue, far more so than during Etch, 
lenny, squeeze or wheezy, all of which I was tremendously satisfied with.

To me, as a layman and only familiar with linux as a user (not as 
developer or programmer) this appears like a step backward. I have met 
many people who thought the Etch and lenny desktops (both kde AND gnome) 
were really useful and gave a good overview. Nowadays, one needs to read 
a manual to even edit the menu. I know, "clicking is for windows and 
redmond fans" but isn't convenience a great gain? And mind you: 
transparency attracts, and how!

One more major strength was AND (with the older distros still is) that 
debian was infinitely faster than other OS or (most) other distros. Now 
this jessie thing has slowed everything down like crazy, and I wonder 
what for? I've read several reports that it was supposedly more stable 
and had a better developed structure. Honestly, if things move head into 
the direction of burying all the standard overview deep down below, then 
there are other options (such as gentoo). The effort will make it 
worthwhile, as you surely know why. I simply wonder, why you'd risk 
losing long-term users and 'customers' - in the sense that people such 
as my humble self also function as multipliers and I have convinced 
dozens of people to abandon their OS in favour of debian. Please don't 
make me, or rather us, regret this.

It would be fantastic, if stretch were to include compiz, a nice, 
handleable and handy desktop (as it was the case with Etch) where you 
can drag and drop the menu by default without major research on how that 
could possibly be done. Is there a way to have the kde desktop back 
without the plasma or maybe to make plasma an option? I can understand 
why people might favour widgets, but it is there a necessity for making 
it compulsory. Linux has the great advantage of giving people freedom of 
choice, please maintain this. It will make it ever more attractive and 
superior to whatever else there might be.

And please, please, PLEASE make Reiserfiles work again. Jessie 
completely torpedoes them which is a nightmare to us, since our entire 
file structure is RF! We kept getting error messages by the minute which 
is unbelievable. Our printers, scanners, flashdisks, ext. hd ALL stopped 
working. It was like a vista experience to us and we saw ourselves 
compelled to downgrade back to wheezy.

As far as I know, the sec support for wheezy continues until 2018. By 
then jessie will (hopefully) be obsolete and we can have something 
reliable and working again.
It would be simply great to use debian as we used to. Great, stable, 
reliable, effective and efficient, relatively easy and certainly 
convenient to handle. Compatibility would be a great asset to have. 
Practically none of the sound or graphic cards that we have are 
recognised by the system. Could there be an option to choose the driver 
from an http / ftp repo while installing the system, instead of ending 
up with something running, but without a functioning display or without 
sound?

You are the masters of the game. I've merely put forth the perspective 
of a player. I hope it goes down well. Keep up the good work. We all 
grow with our challenges.

I shall be looking forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Daniel