It took me ages but I finally rooted my Desire about 6 months ago a I couldn’t find an affordable replacement on a reasonable tariff.
I started with Dgb, then tried a few others and then came back to Dgb. Once I worked out that I needed to redo the hboot that came with Dgb, I’ve ended up with a phone that is significantly faster and better battery life than stock, and I have over 360mb for apps. I have loads on it now and still have 130mb spare. This is with no apps2sd or moving the Delvik Cache (which I never worked out how to do anyway)
Its one of the smallest and fastest roms but you can add the stock email/calendar/photo browser after install from the dgb website.
Apparently the only downside is you can lower the performance if you like playing proper games a the cache is smaller.
It really is worth having another crack at it. I used Revolutionary with no problems.