I love asking this question! it really gets up people's nose. Actually, what i really mean is: "in your opinion, what would be the best distro for me to use given the circumstances i am about to relate?"...

anyway, i used fedora for years before recently turning to Mandriva 2008 only to find it is even more buggy and unpredictable than Fedora (which was: not much, but enough).

Now. I plan to replace good old harvey the desktop machine because he's past it, to be frank, and that's an opportunity to update my O/S too. there must be dozens by now i've not tried. My needs are:

it has to have a really good online package updating framework, like apt or urpmi.
it should be as resource lenient as possible, but i suppose it should have gnome and kde, mainly for the libraries, but most importantly it should have XFce or an easily installable XFce environment via the package management framework i mentioned above.
As few "quirks" as possible, and not one of those distros that tries to be windows, at the expense of functionality and/or stability.
And i mean resource lenient. the "new" PC will probably be prehistoric by most people's standards, but i am not one to be impressed by numbers. The current one i am using is 700MHz P3 w 640MB RAM, new one will be higher, but not that much i wouldn't imagine.

So, not just "what's best", but more importantly, please tell me why. what's your favourite distro, and please tell me a bit about it.

thanks in advance.

The best distribution for you is the best suiting your needs. At the beginning you should to describe your needs and than seek a suitable
distribution.

For some reviews of a dozen or so of distributions look here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/reviews/.

The best one is the one I use! So the best one for you is the one that you use! Now, should we close this since this is asked all the time?

For me, the best one is that which is not Microsoft

I used to believe this, but after trying so many distros, I've realized that there are only about 2 or 3 distros to choose from.

Ubuntu is slow, Suse is painfully slow (especially the package manager), Fedora's bootloader is clunky (you'll be lucky not to get an error 17), Mandriva has had some very questionable business practices (only club members can use free flash?!), and most of the smaller distros have inconsistent release schedules.

Today I use Xubuntu 8.04.

It has all of the ease of Ubuntu but without the bloat.

Try Windoze: http://www.hallikainen.org/windoze/winrg.swf.

That's fun! Did you try to empty the recycle bin?

There's no such "best" distro. Whichever works for you is the best.

Yeah...

Did you try My Computer | Drive N: | Windows?

Did you try Start | Word?

Did you try Start | Solitaire?

Did you try Start | Help?

Did you try Start | Shut Down?

It isn't fun. It's great!

There is no "the best distro".

There is one most suitable for me (Slackware), and some other - most suitable for you(and you have to find it yourself).

I think ubuntu meets all the criteria you set. With a PIII processor and 640MB RAM (not 64MB, right?), ubuntu should run just fine.

I'm closing this thread. These generally create nothing of value. Everyone is going to suggest either the distribution of their choice cause it's the best and or tell the OP that the one he chooses is the best choice. The one he chooses is the best choice and the right answer.

If you really want to find the best distro or debate it, find the dozens of other threads that somehow survived closure in the Distributions forum.

This is even mentioned in the sacred holy of mother sticky threads that's been posted in this very forum since 2003:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...113#post604113