Just note, this is Debian "testing".. things are likely to be broken. I 
don't know and can't predict what.

The future of Debian itself is in doubt (systemd fiasco, which affects 
all other distros)

At the moment, TDE is gaining ground as just about the only 
fully-functional DE out there for those of us who do not wish to run 
systemd. The only other alternative seems to be openbox (a WM rather 
than a DE).

Here, a recompiled dbus has removed all systemd dependencies (although I 
dont use the full TDE "meta"). I just got back "suspend" in TDE logout 
thanks to consolekit2.

I really don't have a clue about skype.

D