I'm new, in fact, this is my first post here. I'd like so say that I had the same problem with calamares using the xfce iso that others have reported. I'm much more familiar with calamares after using it with Arch and other distros based on it like Manjaro and ArchMan. Since I've become rather fed up Arch being so bleeding edge that it frequently messes itself up, I really wanted to find a Debian based distro to switch to. I narrowed my choices down to Sparky and SolydXK. I'm planning on installing Cinnamon as my desktop, since both have an xfce option, they're ultimately pretty similar for my intended use. The major difference, at least through my eyes, is which branch of Debian each uses.
If you aren't aware, SolydXK uses Debian 9 "Stretch" (aka Debian Stable) while Sparky uses Debian 9 "Buster" (aka Debian Testing) as you probably are aware. I decided upon Sparky since it is considered a "rolling" version of Debian. Make no mistake, the live usb version of SolydXK I used to try out was great. If you aren't so sure about using Sparky because you want a distro based on Debian Stable, you should definitely give SolydXK a shot. If you've never heard of it, here's SolydXK's homepage:
https://solydxk.com/I already prepared my computer for Sparky, so I was not going to let the Calamares problem stop me. I decided to give the Advanced Installer (which I'll refer to as 'AI') a shot. I've read that others found the Advanced Installer confusing, but I had no problem whatsoever. Here's my thoughts how it compared to Calamares, which I'm much more accustomed to.
Although it is very different from how Calamares performs and installation, I still found the AI to be quite easy. I didn't have any problems telling it that I wanted to
install root to /sdb1 after reformatting it to ext4,
home to /sdb2 keeping it as ext4 without reformatting, and to
use /sdb3 as swap which I didn't care if it was reformatted or not.
One minor aspect which people might find confusing is that the internal HDD is /dev/sdb not /dev/sda. I'm not certain why there's a difference but I think that's true of a lot of Debian/Ubuntu distros, though.
If anyone would like my help to walk through what options to select for their own system partition layout I'd be very happy to help. Let me know in commends or by PM if you would like some help.