I'm currently running dual boot windows xp/kubuntu 8.04 the only reason for the windows side is i haven't gotten linux running 100% stable yet, it lags or i have a problem here or there(and haven't gotten cs working on it yet). my step dad's running vista/open suse 11. I've heard a lot about suse, how it installs a lot more from cd rather than downloading them after install. My question is does anyone have any suggestions so I don't have to reformat repeatedly and try out every distro. I'm running on:

1 Ghz Duron
398 Mb ram
3x 40 gb hdd(1 windows 1 linux and one ntfs for storing music, iso's misc files etc.)

I'm looking for a user friendly distro, the ability to play mp3, wma, acc, mp4, wmv, etc. run apache, wine(for yahoo, myspace im etc.), flash, java.

Also I'd like it to be able to play music in the bg without lagging(ubuntu running amarok lags especialy if i'm using kde4, where win xp /w litestep and winamp doesn't)

My thoughts were older versions of kubuntu possably 6.10(worked great last time i had it), opensuse, fedora, or debian. just really don't feel like burning all the cds and reformating my hdd for each install, or even running them in vmware(which won't give me a good idea of speed anyway)

I wouldn't recommend going back to an older Kubuntu - too many other problems. You need to explain why you're not happy with Kubuntu 8.04 - maybe it can be fixed.

I just installed Debian SID for a friend a week ago - old Pentium M laptop, runs very well; you'd never guess it was an old 1.8GHz Pentium M. However, you might find Debian a bit annoying. If you select the installer's "desktop" option, you get a million bloatware packages (GNOME, KDE, + a million games and tools you will never use) - maybe it's not so bad if you don't care about losing quite a few MB of disk space. You can get a leaner system by manually installing the graphical stuff later - but who wants to do that. SO, you might have a look at Gentoo instead (but use the pre-built stuff, don't go for the "compile everything yourself" option).

Other people should tell you about their own favorite distribution.

Hello! I'm an openSUSE fanboy and proud of it .

It has really good hardware support and has YAST. If you didn't already know, YAST is a place where you can do just about all your system configuration. It is a front end for the text configuration files and such. Searching and installing software is a breeze. The documentation section of opensuse's website contains howtos and walkthroughs for most tasks that you will do. STICK WITH KDE 3.5 for now since you are new to opensuse; it is very stable. You can always upgrade to KDE4 through YAST.

...one that you like...

Your main questions seem to concern speed and playing media files. For many distros, you will have to get the codecs separately, but there shouldn't be a big problem doing that.

As far as speed is concerned, have you checked whether you are swapping? It is possible that a little more ram might help, depending on how much is ghoing on in the computer at the time, and ram is pretty cheap these days.

If that fails, a simpler GUI (say XFCE although others exist) is probably your next place of call. There are some 'tweaks' that might speed things up, and while there is controversy about how much they help, in a focussed case like this, there is a possibility of a small improvement. Search on 'swappiness' for one suggestion.

Some of the smaller distros (puppy?) copy to ram and run from there and that might help.

Without more information it is difficult to say. There are so many things that sway people one way or another to adopt a particular distro.

Linux Mint full version comes with all the codecs etc. to run your music files. If it is illegal to do so in your country, then there is a Mint Lite version.

It has a reputation for being newbie friendly. It is gnome based but with a KDE version and they are now working on a 64 bit version.

The gnome version uses slab menus.

There are neat utilities to do stuff too. One of my favourites is the right click on a menu item to uninstall it. So simple and effective.

Another idea is to get some live cds from magazines such a Linux Format and try the distros before you install.

Cheers
John