Are there any mods or "legitimate" (ie problem-solving-, not RP-based) playstyles that largely take the focus of stealth out of the game? As banal as it sounds, I really haven't ever seen anyone defeat the argument of stealth in games really just being about waiting, if you are patient enough, I even opened a thread about it in the Thief forum to little discussion. So I don't really enjoy the stealth gameplay, and it has mostly kept me off Deus Ex.

I hear going head on with guns (and other explosives possibly too) blazing is fairly non stealthy way to go.

Yes, but there is no justification for it. You might as well stealth UNTIL you get spotted and then go guns blazing.

Sorry, I don't understand your point. You don't want to go stealthy because you find it boring to wait. Yet you don't want to go guns blazing because there's no reason to as long as you're stealthy.

How about looking at the place in question, look for "alternative" entry points (such as piling up boxes to enter through a window), shooting anyone you see with a silenced weapon until you are spotted and they raise the alarm, and at that point switching to the shotgun? Hell, you might even find some way of dealing with the guards at the garrison while you sneak in, I remember a particularly memorable gas leak on the vent above a security room.

I don't see why not. You're free to put skill points into heavy weapons and explosives and the like. Items like ballistic armour, particularly in conjunction with the ballistic resistance and aggressive defence augmentations would allow you to tank a stupid amount of fire and guns like the assault rifle, combat shotgun and plasma rifle aren't exactly suited to stealth. The faster running augmentation would make circle-strafing a perfectly viable tactic. Unless I'm missing something, there's plenty of scope for building an action-focused JC Denton.

Oh you can totally go for a non-stealth build. But I am not finding much reason not to stealth until caught anyway. Unless... there is significant incentive to call those first shots or invade a room via grenade first? And unless I'm mistaken, with great discipline, stealth, even with no specialization, could take you very far.
The thing is, I am approaching this game as a challenge to my ingenuity as well as my reflexes. If I accept that "I want to RP a gun blazer, so let's go shoot dudes!" then I muddle the game-rules, and from that point, none of my interaction with the game will be skillbased to any satisfying degree. If this totally is the wrong approach to the game, since the gaming community seems to frown upon it so much, I'm left wondering what exactly to play for. It's not optimal as a simulator or a choose-your-own adventure, so what's left?
I just want more than blowing off steam out of my gaming. If I don't approach the game from a challenge-perspective, the experience would seem fairly hollow to me.

Investing in the shooting skills is the only way to make it more like an FPS. If you won't be satisfied with that, then you could only try mods or DX is not for you.

I complained about the gimped mechanics elsewhere: http://www.gog.com/forum/deus_ex_series/theyve_exaggerated_the_inaccuracy

hmm, I think I get your point now. If the story is not enough to make you play, there's little point in making DX a simple FPS because there are tons of better FPS out there.

How about taking the sneaky shooter approach? You don't have to wait and keep knocking each enemy down when nobody is looking, but try to explore for alternate entrance and shoot enemies when you see them, but from unexpected places such as vents or wells; and turn the turrets against them. It's not your everyday FPS, and on realist difficulty you can go down with a well placed pistol shot. In fact, on realist I find the starting NFS goons more dangerous than later MJ12 troopers, because a basic pistol's headshot is letal while an assault rifle tends to spread the damage and therefore is more survivable.

Alternatively, you can use an absolute stealth approach. I once did a run without using any weapons at all, so no takedowns, no shooting. Just sneaking around avoiding people. It isn't that hard, there's usually some path with little to no enemies which makes things more about exploring than waiting to find the opening to slip through. Then again, I've beaten the game several times already, it may not be that easy to explore the scenarios to that extent on your first run.

I'm playing DX for the first time and I go with non-lethal approach.
I think game profits stealth gameplay the most and playing it like a simple shooter will be difficult, frustrating (in first levels) and waste of game mood. But it's possible, you can be another agent Navarra and kill for fun but in this game it's easy to die and it's hard to kill. Even if can manage to deal with 3 enemies, 2 turrets and a bot, you still can be shoot by snipier, you will kill inocent people (no problem for hard core gamer ;)) and it totaly waste the small amount of realism that this game try to have.
If Rambo 3 is your ideal of fun go for it, but if you preffer to do it more like John Mcclane in first Die Hard you also can. Not every game let's you choose. And if shooting will ruin the game plot and great mood that's pity but it's your call. You can even beat DX in less than 50 min. if you want :) and din't read single newspaper :)

I play with "classic" FPS metod. Quick save/quick load every time I made mistake (which is very often :)) and so i think the most "realistic" aproach will be using stealth but NOT SAVING during mission and try to deal with problems as they go. Enemy spoted you and sounds the alarm? Oh well kill with loud pistol, shoot every opponent in sight, deactivete the alarm and go on with stealth.

When I think of it now it's great that DX (other than every other RPG) don't give you skill pionts for killing opponents. Becouse there is no one way to beat this game. But some ways are better than the other? Heck it;s only a game not a life silulator..

Well the goal of this game is to stay alive and manage to get your objectives done. The easiest way to do that is to hide and not get shot obviously. If you want to just blow up stuff and a challenge, you might want to try the Quake / Unreal tournament series.

It's simple. If you want to go stealth you go stealth. If you don't want to go stealth, then you don't go stealth. Pretty simple.

I don't see how that lines up with any of the arguments I presented. But I am pretty convinced that there isn't a way, and I wasn't expecting otherwise.

Try loading yourself down with heavy weapons (GEP Gun, Flamethrower, Plasma Rifle) and using those as much as possible.

Call me stupid, but I still can't understand pheenix point.

This game itself doesn't reward player in any way going stealth or non-stealth!
You wiil not get extra exp. points (skill points) for killing, stunting or avoiding enemies. Some dialogs will change if you kill or not enemies and thats all. Very subtle differences for people that wants to replay game and know every bit of it.
You can choose battle or stealth skills and later battle or stealth augs.
The plot? It's rather linear and it doesn't really maters if you go through main gate or vents. You must just get to certain place, how you do it doesen't matter.
No extra skill points for hacking computers or using turrets. The mood of the game changes a bit, but if someone don't want to wait and sneak then don't. And if the fights are to tought choose easy diffriculty.
The only reward for stealth is to sometimes overheard guard talking, which isn't that important.

Well pheenix Deus Ex just may not be the game for you. I've seen several good posts in here describing some of the many ways one can play the game and none of them seem to satisfy you.

Now that's okay. Nothing is for everyone, though and it looks like what you want and Deus Ex simply aren't compatible. Maybe time to join a RL paintball group?

For my part I use a combo of stealth and quick attack...almost a Ninja approach that rewards my patience with skill points, augmentations, equipment, weapons and ammo. This has worked for me since I started playing the raw game a dozen years ago.

No harm/no foul, pheenix. Via Con Dios.