Of all the distros I've used, if I want one which does many things for me, and yet allows me to "get down and dirty" with it, is Fedora... Though for "manual" stuff I'd go with either Gentoo, Slackware or LFS.

This is great, Ubuntu has won. Being a Debian based distro, I must say I'm quite pleased with the outcome.

Slack -- pretty close and Debian pure has also got a substantial amount of votes. Thanks for all who voted for Ubuntu and Debian. The combined tally is pretty impressive.

I start using Linux for just over 1 year and Fedora Core was the one I have chosen. I have to say I didn't choose a "easy" disto but like what Thetargos said. You can get "down and dirty" with FC. Isn't that part of the fun of using LINUX?

This whole Ubuntu thing is interesting considering KDE wins windows manager of the year.

Very conflicting? results.

Okay first I had Ubuntu then I switched to freeBSD then Solaris 10 the NetBSd then back to ubuntu then to NetBSD again then to NextentaOS then SimplyMEPIS!!!! Wich is where I plan to stay!!!

In a field populated with outstanding distributions, being listed at all should be considered an honor. Being selected as Distribution of the Year must be humbling. It lets you fly over the intricacies of this complex operating system, or get as "down and dirty" as you want. I see no conflict between the ubuntu and KDE awards. I routinely switch between gnome, KDE, and xfce - whatever my mood. No problem. The reason ubuntu has won this recognition is because it is winning more converts faster than most others at this point in time. No one should feel slighted, we've never had it so good.

Kubuntu wasn't listed separately so fans of that probably just checked the Ubuntu box. Besides, KDE took 65% of the DE votes, and Ubuntu took 19.5% of distro votes, so no conflict really. (GNOME has 25% of the DE votes, so it all adds up).

AJ

Does it? More people voted on the distribution poll than DE poll...

Since we're dealing with proportions, not specific numbers of people, it doesn't matter that more voted in one poll than another. Both polls had a large enough sample of voters that we can assume they are reasonably accurate representaions of Linux users in general.

Perhaps not so many people voted for a favourite DE because some prefer simpler WMs?

Or they use their distro's default. Which for Ubuntu would be GNOME, even when they can always install KDE (due to the inherent Debian benefits of having the distro's apt repos available)

You have to scroll down the page a bit. Here is a poll that has been around a bit longer. Is it more accurate? Who knows. A poll is nothing more than a reflection of it's participants opinion at the time.

http://counter.li.org/reports/machines.php

Don't forget to sign up

Probably because the KDE users load up the KDE version of Ubuntu called Kubuntu. Or just load the KDE windows manager in Ubuntu giving them both gnome and KDE.

Slackware

(..4 ever)

Slackware forever !!!
Long live Mr. Patrick

Slack was my first distro, and I love everything about it execept the long boot time (I'm not going to give up my Windows games and Cedega is garbage). LFS is a nice 2nd though if you install pkgtools and build .tgz packages with it. I don't like Gentoo much. USE flags just add another layer of complexity to me, and don't seem any easier than just passing the corresponding argument to ./configure. Also, dependency checking and automatic downloading and such from my pacakge manager isn't important to me. That's what README, INSTALL, and ./configure --help | less are for.