i know how to install xorg and that kind of stuff and kde

I've had very good luck with Debian auto-detecting all of my hardware:-)

Why not actually try the install and come back with questions for things that are not working ? it's easy to speculate whether your graphical desktop or audio may or may not work.. but if it does work, then this discussion is rather pointless.

Install Etch, figure out what isn't working, then come back with specific questions. it will be much more productive.

we all have graphical desktops, working sound, working multimedia, can watch DVD's etc.. etc.. so it does work, and if it doesn't it can be fixed.

now if you have some pre-install question regarding dual booting with another OS or something to that effect, now would be a good time for that type of question.

the point was that i've never run Lenny before and i didn't know what the differences were, and actually my audio doesn't seem to work right now, but the point is I didn't want to install all the extra packages so i install nothing but the base. then i install xorg kde-core and kdm
but after that i don't know if i needed something else to get the audio to work, if i was missing a package or something, i don't know.
the original question doesn't really seem to have much of an answer.