I've been running SHR-unstable (which as just been promoted to SHR-testing) for the past week and it's the closest I've found to a usable daily phone yet.  I tried a few distros before settling on SHR:

Om2008.12

Pro:  Good range of apps, basic tools have the basic features you'd expect, such as in-call volume control and the ability to import contacts into the contact list.  An excellent selection of apps available.  Kustomizer and FDOM provide quick and easy scripts for installing everything you can imagine.  I ran Kustomizer on mine.

Con:  The standard UI is horrible.  Ugly square application icons on a black background, unusable keyboard, useless settings options.  I found it slow and difficult to use.  The QTopia UI was ugly and didn't fit in well with the rest of the UI, with the two soft-buttons at the bottom of the screen regularly vanishing.  Slow.  In the end both speaker and in-call volume somehow became muted and I couldn't get them back.

Om2009 Unstable Paroli

Pro:  Nothing.

Con: Paroli may be the way of the future, but for now it's unusable, featureless and ugly.  I ended up only running this for half an hour or so because I couldn't get it to do anything useful, like answer calls, have a contact list or otherwise act like a phone.

Om2009 Unstable

This is the version with the Illume UI.  Looked good, but the

Pro: Seemed to run reasonably quickly, had a nice Illume UI.  Basic apps seems to work well. 

Con:  Not very functional yet.  I accidentally ran Paroli and couldn;t make it go away.  I ended up having to ssh in a manually kill it.

SHR-Testing (17-04-09)

Pro: Fast, good looking Illume UI.  Very responsive and so far very reliable.  Suspend and resume are the fastest I've found yet - way faster than the old Windows Moble phone I had been using.

Con:  Takes several second to answer a call after you hit the "Accept" button, during which time the ringer keeps ringing and nobody can hear anyone else.  Dialler and PIM apps very basic - e.g. contacts only works with SIM contacts, dialler is just a dialler with not siginificant integration with contact or phone log. No calendar or tasks.

What are your experiences?