I've been using Fedora Core 3 for a couple months now and I am starting to hate it. I use to appreciate its simplicity and usability but that is gone now that I realize how bloated and slow and inefficient it is (it does have its good points yes but the good is overshadowed by the fact that I can wash my car and rotate my tires in the time it takes to boot up).
I'm building a new computer before I head off to college:
AMD Athlon 3500+, A8V-E Deluxe, 1 G ram, 6600 GT GPU, and a sata drive
and I plan to use Linux full time in College instead of Dual Booting Windows (dual booting is the devil). I'm certainly not a newb but at the same time I don't claim to be a linux expert. I want a distro that has all these characteristics (the topmost being of the highest priority):

1. Fast
2. Lightweight
3. Efficient
4. Up To Date
5. Simple
6. Very Compatible (large selection of drivers)

I plan to use XFCE full time no matter what distro i choose, and I'm going to be using my comp mainly for listening to music, typing papers, tinkering, browsing the net, and playing UT2k4 (and the Baldurs Gate series if i can convince them to run).
From the research i've done Ubuntu linux sounds like a good choice (I've also considered Gentoo and Slackware).

What is the distro that best suits my needs?

Gentoo will fit all you needs, but 5. simple. It's hard to install but when it's done it's perfect, I don't know 'bout slackware.

please avoid double posts

Slackware is very configurable, but not quite the pain to install as Gentoo.

A full install of slack 10, (all 3 gigs of stuff) still only takes < 1 min to boot on my machine (which is similar to yours-AMD Athlon XP 3500+, gig ram, EIDE HD).

Only problem with slack is #6, it can be a b**** to get more arcane devices to work (as long as you aren't using weird wireless cards or winmodems you should be good). Install and config is entirely text based, but 10 is more automated than 9 and previous. It comes with XFCE4, and it makes installing just the packages you want easy (although selecting them all can be time-consuming). Updating will be a problem, it doesn't have the auto-update features like RH or Debian or Gentoo but most of the stuff in slack doesn't need updating that often. Overall it is very fast, very lightweight, and very efficient (just hope you like CLI stuff, or you will hate installing it).

i would suggest debian as well. also, gentoo is worth checking out.

sorry bout the double post

i'd say its a choice between slackware and gentoo. Gentoo is good if u can deal with the install and the time it takes to get running just right, it is worth it though because it truly is your linux box. Then theres slack if u want a quick, easy install and everything up and running quickly.

are you also sorry for not using the freakin search feature? or google.com/linux "lightweight linux distro"???

Ubuntu should do nicely. It's very simple to install and use, fits on a single CD, can automatically check for and download updates (as of 5.04 "Hoary), and is compatible with all the hardware I've tried. I don't know whether it's faster or slower than most, but with the specs of your PC and XFCE I imagine it'd be screaming fast

Good Luck!

DAChristen29:
not really sorry, no... But if you are going to have a fit about it I guess i'll try it