I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm perfectly happy using the few distros I get on well with, but I had to kiss SO many frogs before I found my princes. And every now and again I like to try a new distro just out of curiosity. However, the failure rate for whatever reason is typically a good 35%.

For example, I just tried installing OpenSuse 11.1 from CD and it gets to a certain point and the video just goes down. Even on 'failsafe' the same thing happens; video goes and there's no response from the keyboard.

I then tried the latest Mint 6.0 on the same partition, again from CD and it went in like a charm; smooth as you like. Same with PCLinuxOS and Mepis, there were no problems encountered during their installations, either.

I guess it's all down to hardware and drivers/modules, but why do SOME distros seem to get it right every time and others always seem to fail so badly? I mean, particularly a well-established flavour like Suse that's been around for ages and it's STILL crap! Why??

I think this has to do with two competing philosophies. One philosophy is to produce a distro that will be stable over a number of years and not change much. The other is that the latest and greatest features should be available.
(Stable here means doesn't change, not doesn't crash. Doesn't crash should be mandatory with any final version.)

Suse is built on the philosophy of not changing (so it is more attractive for business use). The other distros you mention seem to me to be more geared to the latest feature type philosophy. It may simply be that the kernel modules you need are a newer feature (or a feature of a newer kernel that was decided to not be upgraded in the Suse you are using so as to prevent potentially breaking something in someone's server).

Just a guess,

Forrest

correct me if i'm wrong.

The major distro will encounter the legal problem, while the rest will not

the example is ubuntu & mint

that's y there's an almost-complete codec and ATI/NVIDIA driver installed come out-of-the-box (in mint)

while in the major distro (ubuntu) u will have to install it manually (from its repository)

Why ? Because they do. That's the way they are. That's the way things turned out.

I've also had many negative experiences with many distros, and I'd count the failure rate at way higher than 35 %, more like 70-80 %. Most distros disappoint me. Good thing there's still slackware otherwise I'd probably try to switch to *BSD.

Well earlier today I installed Slackware 12.2 on my multi-boot desktop machine and have yet to try it (it came with only LILO which is SO old hat and I haven't hooked up GRUB for it yet). I have always been very impressed with Slax and have noticed the way Slackware users are venerated and looked up to by everyone except the BSDers and the Solaris crowd. Some day maybe I'd like to join 'em. I don't expect to be venerated, though, being a bit clueless at times. :-/

In my mind, the reason distros are different is that they are built upon a purpose set by the maintaner (Redhat,Slackware,Ubuntu, etc.). If the purpose for which they are designed is not the purpose you want them for, they will "fall flat" as you put it.

For instance, Fedora is a bleeding edge distro by Redhat. It is released by Redhat as a test bed for newest software before they put it in their enterprise OS.
Ubuntu is geared toward the desktop user, and is tweaked in such ways as to make it as easy to use as possible.
CentOS is a "clone" of Redhat Enterprise.
Slackware is more technical, and (from the beginning of time) has a big library of hacking tools right out of the box.

Each has a different purpose, and it's up to the user to determine if it will work for them.

For 95% of my needs, almost any distro works. It's the last 5% that had me using "Schizophrenic 0.1" for well over a year.

The problem for distro authors/maintainers is that the last "5%" is different for everyone.

The key items that kept me in schizo-land:
Must have the seamless user-switching functionality of kdm (hint--only possible with KDE)
basic automation by default--eg automounting when inserting a CD
basic things like sound should be installed an configured by default.
No fancy stuff--3D, transparency, and all the other little cutesy things
Provide proprietary drivers and plugins by default
no silly re-branding---I want Firefox, and not Iceweasel, Bon Echo, or Gran Paradiso.
no ubuntu "no-root-user" nonsense.

I'm almost there-----If I could get the "kdemod" version of KDE 3.5.10 into Mepis, I'd be at 99.9% (At least Mepis provides KDE 3.5.10 by default)