What distro would be recommended for me?
 

I would post this in the distro forum but that is subsected and no central forum exists.

I have tried different distros of Linux, and they all do some things well, but not one really stands out as being something I can call home.

I prefer KDE to Gnome, I like being able to install the latest applications and libraries from source, but also would like convenience of a package manager for dependencies. I am essentially a Windows refugee because of lacking hardware support, ironically enough, and I dare not upgrade to Vista. Wine ran on some distros well, others had issues, and one just never got running to par, if at all. I know there are many different open source alternatives to Windows programs, but I am a gamer and wine or cedega are important to me.

So far, Slackware, as I remember, was able to run Wine pretty well. Kubuntu had issues with wine and my games of choice, and source just didn't seem to work. Fedora 8 has lots of support, but wine just wouldn't go.

At the moment I am bouncing between Slack and Kubuntu, where Slack can play my games almost effortlessly, Kubuntu has the package manager that I like very much. Is there a best of both in another distro?

I would not think that the choice of distro would have a big effect on how well WINE (Or CrossOver, or Cedega) works.

If you like to get under the hood, you might want to look at Arch. There is a version of KDE (KDEMod) which purports to be optimized for Arch.

If you like Slackware and are looking for a package manager, you may want to check out slapt-get. It's basically apt-get for Slackware and works pretty well.

distro search
 

Well you sond like me, althoug i do not game on my linux box yet. The nice thing is there is a distro for everyone. Since you are just discovering what is right for you just keep playing around.

I have used slack since the 7.x generation and also have played with many others. Have you tried openSuSE 10.3 yet, it comes in a live flavor and a complete install version, respectively; one is a cd image and the other is a dvd image. check out distro watch to see whats out there. Some others are Mandreva, DSL, Puppy, slax true debian the list goes on and on.

have fun and good luck

Of course, I would recommend Cross Linux from Scratch. Everything, including Wine, works fine for me on all of my CLFS boxes. Wine works like a champ on my Gentoo box and both my kids run Wine without a hitch on Ubuntu. There's no reason you can't install dpkg, apt, and any number of GUI front-ends on a base Slackware installation if you wanted to.

To compile from source on Kubuntu you need to install the build-essential package, as well as the -dev packages for the dependencies. If you're having issues with Wine on a distro, it could be the binary build acting up, so try installing from source. The best advice I can give to you, since you're a gamer, is pick a distribution that is widely used. If you do, chances are that most issues you come across have been found and solved by someone else.