Now that wasn't so hard!

dhclient eth0 is everyone's friend, giving you a debian ipconfig /renew!

So let's boil Debian on Hyper-V down a bit, shall we? It installs actually just fine, but there's one caveat -- when doing the network adapter, you have to use the legacy network adapter so that Debian will pick it up. I haven't had a chance yet to try and recompile in the Hyper-V components so that we can use the mouse, so I thought I would try a little X Client/Server action.

As it turns out, XMing is the tool to use for running an X server on Windows, much better than the old Cygwin/X. And of course, Debian supports XDMCP. Debian-->Apps-->System-->GDM Setup. I also installed SSH, though I don't think in the end that was necessary -- what WAS necessary was a reboot, and in that reboot it just didn't pick up the DHCP address again -- tsk tsk -- and that's what was screwing me up.

Also for future reference, you can use ALT+F1 to access the 'start' menu in Gnome, and ALT+F4 closes it just like it should.

Now that wouldn't make a half-bad termserv with some memory / horsepower -- we'll have to see how the new wine 1.0 works out...