Hi,
thanks again for your replies.
I played around with waitusb quite lot. It didn't make any difference.
The desktop showed up only if I renamed the tce directory to cde. Then again the system wouldn't remember anything.
I found out one solution that seems to work.
First I changed the file system on my pendrive from fat32 to ext2, as the home=... boot codes wouldn't be accepted saying "Microsoft file system bla bla".
Plus:
As I said earlier, in the boot menu I select WiFi+Firmware.
There I edit the initrd line by removing
cde, (removing cde alone didn't work)
showapps ...,
base
All I keep is desktop=...
and I add waitusb=5, tce=... home=... etc.
That brings up the desktop alright and it keeps the tce and e. g. my wifi password.
Also no "first run" after every boot.
I've persisted the initrd... changes in the boot menu file.
I haven't tried yet which of the omissions did the trick.
And I'm far from understanding, why.
Any ideas?