I know......For my Slackware failures, I carry a burden of guilt with me every day.....

I think that none of the big names can be called worst linux distro. The Gentoo, Slackware, Ubuntu, Mandriva ect.. all have endure the test of time and are widely used. The worst distros usually don't live long for many reasons.
My worst distro would be Corel Linux.

I'm pleased to see that I'm not the only user who thinks KDE 4 is awful and that KDE 3.5 was fine. I also agree that *buntu is patronizing. I And I'm still annoyed at its installer for overwriting my GRUB without my approval.

heh, I find KDE 3.5 'awful' and KDE4 'fine' (well, from 4.3 on anyway). Horses for Courses, I guess.

As for the *buntus, some people seem to like them, but personally, I'd rather use Vista!

Did I hear you right?? Are you referring to Windows Vista?? (jk)

Personally, I'm one who does like Ubuntu/Kubuntu. But then again, I only run the LTS versions, and I don't upgrade until the first big bug-fix is released. Seems to me that the ones who install the latest versions as soon as they're released are the ones who have the most trouble.

BTW- I do like CentOS better for some applications, but for now I'll keep the 'buntus on some of my PCs until I find just cause to change. Just my

Cheers

Doesn't having your GRUB overwritten bother you?

You're certainly not!! Although I must admin, I am not a fan of KDE at all, not Gnome. I am an fvwm user, I like to have a tool which I can get the job done quickly, efficiently and the way I want to, I am not bothered about eye candy!

I always remember my uni lecturer (Dr. John Latham) who developed the configuration packages based on redhats another level (called anotherlevelup - http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/~jtl/ALU/index.html) saying how when you first start to use KDE/Gnome, at first it seems very different from windows however the more you use it, the more and more like windows you realise it is.
When you first start using a WM like FVWM you feel it is rather like windows (albeit an older version!) however the more you use it, the more and more you realise it is isn't at all like windows - that is the beauty of FVWM!

Just in case anyone is interested, he's done some pretty neat stuff with the it - http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/~jtl/ALU/features.html. A very clever guy, lol!

Ubuntu 9.10 (the latest version). All was good with previous Ubuntu versions, but then 9.10 managed to completely screw up my sound. (I blame PulseAudio; grossly over-engineered software if ever there was any). I had had other minor gripes with Ubuntu for a while, so I jumped ship to Arch Linux, which is where I still am, and am very happy with it.

I've never even been able to get Gentoo to install. So I suppose I might call it another candidate for worst distro. I don't demand fancy GUIs or one-click setup (Arch takes a fair amount of manual configuration), but I do at least want an installer.

I nominate ubuntu karmic.
Reasons:
I had converted a bunch of family members and friends to Linux from windows. They were happily using ubuntu till jaunty, but karmic just humiliated me! I gave them Linux mint to play with and some have taken liking towards Arch and Slack.

You converted family and friends from Windows and now they like Arch and Slack? They must be very adept, or it was long enough ago that they've had time to get beyond newbie distros, or both.

My wife knows squat about PC let alone Slackware........I setup her laptop with Slackware and she has no problems at all. The only time I touch it is to apply updates.

My cousins are always eager to learn. [In fact I taught them how to use ratpoison and they love it! We have geeks in the family!] My aunt and uncle's PC and laptops have Arch KDE and they have no problems. Of course Setup was done by me. This christmas it was my duty to install linux everywhere and on everything that can be bootstrapped. :P Anyway, once installed Arch and Slack, created a few aliases in ~/.bashrc and they just need to press Ctl+T for a terminal and type some short commands like "up for update, or in for install" ,etc. So in a way,I made ubuntufied versions of Arch and Slack for them. :P

It's never done that to me. It has always just updated Grub to include the new installation in the boot menu. But as I said earlier, I only install the LTS versions. The latest was 8.04.

Cheers

Um, well... My response to this is defined by the column to the left...

Best? No. If you understand Linux, then it's time to migrate...so is the story with me... But, it's not fair to mock them for trying to help people who don't understand Linux and have their computer "work."
The only real problems here is (1) their modifications to the Linux kernel, which don't actually alter Linux in any way, it's just annoying trying to translate vanilla Linux instructions into Ubuntu instructions.
And (2), Really annoying and dissatisfying default settings. I mean that lol.

Worst?! H e (double toothpicks) no. Perhaps I should include my experience here. I started with the dreaded Fedora. Learned nothing. Understood nothing. Oh, and Lord, those old threads about the BCM4318 AirForce one card...spare me!
I switched to Ubuntu and found life. Thanks to it, I know what a /etc/fstab is for and how to edit it, how to crack my wireless networks WEP, several command line commands, what and how to partition a hard drive, what open-source is, how to make a bash script, what Linux is and how it works, what daemons are, not to mention all of the config files I have opened in search of whatever I was working for. I also understand GRUB very well, and a bit more. Definitely didn't make me anything comparable to the Linux gurus here on LQ, not even within the remote vicinity of them, but was a wonderful first step. Although perhaps this is the result of what LQ has helped me realized. Definitely kudos to you guys.

I have a few distros I will never try or use again:

• Linpus. (How many times a thread has been started because of this...)
• Slackware. 13.0 or earlier. Major trouble here. Mostly I have found I can attribute this to the kernel version and not the distro so when the next Slackware comes out this will likely change.
• Fedora (and red-Hat). I heartily dislike Fedora and their sponsor for many reasons. Plus it's slower than any distro I have used (no benchmarks, just very easily noticed on my PC).

Tips top nominee to Fedora. Yuck.

Right now I am heavily considering Arch Linux. it looks really nice.
Will still need to read another few hours of the documentation before I ready myself for the install though. :/

I am not mocking ubuntu. In fact openSUSE and mandriva does a better job at simplifying Linux for newbies. Please note I said "ubuntu karmic" and not "ubuntu". I also stated the reason for why I chose it.