I WOULD like to upgrade from 8.10 but it looks like I will need a new graphics card due to support issue's re the fglrx driver I need for the ati x300 I'm using.Any how hope you sort it soon. (Open source forever}

Any suggestion ?

Try debian or downgrade your ubuntu

No my dear friend, I am not much interested in Ubuntu anymore. Anyway even 8.04 did not give good support for my sound card, though it was not that slow. So if I really have to change . . . . i am thinking of a NON ubuntu distro. Ubuntu distros only look good but they are getting too 'heavy' on resources. Every time when i boot my comp and I see my HDD struggling to remain alive - making all sorts of sounds for some minutes . . . . my hearts sinks.

If in Debian group, how abt MEPIS ? It has an excellent community. And what abt Fedora ? I have NO idea abt the Red Hat group.

Any suggestion ?

Why not debian ?

Well . . .
have never tried but have an impression that it is a bit more user unfriendly than others.
I am still a Linux newbie ! So a lil bothered abt - have to do a lot of tweaking and typing etc
But i may be wrong - correct me if i am so !

Download some live cd's from the distro's you want to use, and try them out

checked up on the debian's website - it seems many packages like skype are not included in the stable version.

There are repo's for skype on debian stable

So that means Skype is not available in Debian's repos we have to directly download it from Skype.com

Is that safe ? Considering the huge repo of Debian, I thought I will find nearly all the packages in it.

Moreover, what do you think one should go for . . . . stable or testing ?

Why not, it's recommended in the debian wiki.
http://wiki.debian.org/skype
If you want stability, go for stable
If you want more recent versions of software, go for testing,
if you like to live on the edge, go for unstable

See
http://www.debian.org/releases/

One thing I tend to do is pick the release - like Squeeze, then as it rolls from unstable to testing to stable to LTS I don't have to tweak it

Debian has probably the largest package set out there - but a lot of it is in the non-free section. They're kinda picky (hence iceweasel)

Well, for me stability and security is far more important than looks. But i am a very ordinary Linux user and so mostly dependent on GUI and so would not like to work on CLI.
But at the same time I would like all my hardware to be well detected automatically. I find that even till Ubuntu 9.01 my sound card is not that well supported as I would expect it to be.

I've just gone from Ubuntu 8.04 to 9.10 and I recommend 9.10 to anyone.
It's so good I'll be uninstalling Windows XP Pro from my dual boot setup and running Ubuntu 9.10 exclusively, it's the best OS I've ever used.
It's way way faster than XP and it's got everything I need, even detected my Canon MP160 Scanner/Printer and my Logitech webcam and found the drivers for them.
I believe that this version of Ubuntu has finally cracked it, they have passed Microsoft and are screaming down the back straight well ahead of them.
I recommend that you install Ubuntu 9.10 and stick to it until they bring out the next one.

Try Zenwalk: http://www.zenwalk.org/ Zenwalk is very light, stable, and up to date. It has a text based installer, but it is pretty easy to follow and install. Zenwalk has lots of GUI apps to configure your system. The netpkg package manager resolves dependencies and works well. Netpkg can be run from the xnetpkg GUI or from the terminal.
Try reading the Zenwalk manual first so you know what to expect when you install Zenwalk:
http://manual.zenwalk.org/manual_entry_en.html