advice for completion of a stunt

so, to see if i could do it, i've flashed ubuntu 13.04 to a 2012 asus nexus tablet. to my surprise, wifi and such work. *not* to my surprise, i hate hate hate the ubuntu default desktop and want to replace it as soon as i can. after some poking around (made more interesting by an onscreen keyboard that comes and goes as it wishes, irrespective of whether text needs to be entered, which is annoying when you don't need it and maddening when you do), i got a terminal running and sought to install some of the essentials. (by tradition, the first thing i install on a new linux system is mc, because it is the best tool to get me out of whatever trouble i get myself into.) and i discovered that all the repositories are now 404. am hoping to find someplace where they are archived so as to severely edit my sources list and get, among other things, tde. the corresponding debian distro is raring. it does sort of run (though about half the stuff is canonical trying to sell me music and stuff, which i think they've stopped doing anyway) but without a decent desktop i can't imagine how i can put it through its paces. and yes, the icons are tiny, beyond the fact that ubuntu touch kinds sucks in general. in tde i can make the icons bigger. i'm hoping to justify the expenditure of time . . . and tun tde on a tablet. -- dep The shortest distance between you and playing great acoustic guitar: the great new instructional DVDs from Marjorie Thompson, available at www.MarjorieThompson.com