I had mandrake 9.1. I seemed to work pretty good.

Then I upgraded to Mandrake 10.1. I liked it a lot but I had a lot of trouble with software installation and especially rpms , whether installing from Mandrake Control Center or from URPMI. I was told that the problem was probably that since Mandrake (Mandriva) 2006 came out, 10.1 was going obsolete and the mirrors were probably not supporting it anymore.

So I went to Mandriva 2006. Same old crap. Can't make any progress because of the constant 'Installation Failed Installation' errors and packages that don't work right.

I've had enough. Am I messing with a distro that just plain sucks? Or, since so many people love Mandriva, maybe it just don't work right on all computers.

The only other distro I know anything about is Redhat, and I don't like the name. Also, they say it isn't as user friendly.

I know this is an old worn out question that has no answer but, what distro is best for me?

I use this mostly for surfing and email. Will do some word processing, graphics and cd burning. Will use it also for ebay etc. In other words, mostly a home pomputer with some other abilities.

I would recommend Mepis or Kubuntu. As they both use KDE, as you are used to. I have had positive experiences with both of them. Mepis includes a lot of stuff like Nvidia drivers and other closed source.

I would say Kubuntu has the bigger comminity and better hardware suport. just my experience. And mepis is going to be based on ubuntu soon...

Anyway, I didn't like mandrake for the reason's you describe. I would heartily recommend kubuntu to you.

Personally I use slackware and foresight linux, but that's my preference. They're much "harder" to use...

Whilst I am not a big fan of Mandriva these days I think some of your criticism is a bit unfair. The Mandriva site always lists the product life cycle and somewhere on that site is an article that states that 10.1 would not be supported after the release of 2006.

As for mirrors, I have never had problems with the mirrors for 2005 and 2006. One thing you should always do is update your sources regularly so that urpmi searches for new packages and doesn't complain about packages not being found or failing because they don't exist on the mirrors anymore.

I know Mandriva is not the best distro around, but some of the issues you state could probably not have been a big deal had you been up to scratch with the way urpmi works. Same thing on Suse or Debian, if you don't update your software repos, you can have similar problems.

And regarding Redhat/Fedora, I think you need to try out distros yourself and make your own conclusions about whether they are user friendly or not. Someones personal opinions may not be the same as yours.

See the reviews at this site re PCLinuxOS. If you used to like Mandrake but think it has lost its way, then PCLOS is right for you. It is easier to set up and use, however, much of the stuff (like PCLinuxOS Control Centre) is based on Mandrake, not surprising since PCLinuxOS is based on Mandrake version 9.2 but has gone forward a lot more. For example it is a LiveCD and you can add more software through a very simple interface, Synaptic, which is superior to Gurpmi.

Consider forgetting .rpm distros altogether. I started with Redhat 6, Stayed with them thru FC4, then, since I had an extra computer sitting around and was curious about Debian, I installed it. Ran both systems for about a month, and there was no doubt in my mind about which was the better system for me.

Somebody above mentioned Kubuntu & Mephis, but, since you are an experienced Linux user, why use a derivative designed for newbies. You're ready for the real thing. Why Debian...A Sales Pitch

fair point. I prefer Debian and Slackware based distro's. That said i am far from newbie and i run Mepis nicely on my laptop. It's really just Debian with some gui tools.....

Slackware is good, but the package manegement is more minimal (that said it doesn't really go wrong)....

Slackware, Debian or Gentoo. All three are suitable choices for a somewhat experienced Linux user who would prefer not to use an RPM based distro.

A few thoughts -- based my experiences so far, may not be true for anyone else.

Debian -- pain in the arse to install. Huge software repository with decent package management.
Slackware -- Super easy to install. Pain in the arse to configure. Sane package management, but no automatic dependancy resolution.
Gentoo -- pain in the arse to install. Pain in the arse to configure. Spectacular package management.