I know this isn't a question - its an answer; to every one asking which distro to get!
If you have got as far as choosing a linux/*nix distro - you should have a brain. This means thats all the hand holding buggy snail OSs are out the window. These include:
Redhat linux, Fedora Core and Mandrake. I know suse itsn't all that bad, but it falls in this catorgory, sorry!

And if you want anything permenant this rules out live CDs, including knoppix, DSL... (by the way if you do want a live CD, knoppix is the one!)

Vector linux is similar to dsl, but is not that sutable for a main OS, because its so small and doesn't contain everything someone would want in a linux distro.

If you arn't using very standard hardware, this rules out most of the smaller OSs as they take ages to setup on computers like laptops... FreeBSD doesn't have great hardware support for laptops and stuff.

If you are fairly new to linux, this rules out gentoo, netbsd, openbsd... these are just not sutable for day to day stuff especialy with a new linux user.

Yopper is fast and quite good, but still needs to iron out its 100s of boot errors and fix up a bit - this applies to debian sarge aswell. These 2 both have very good hardware support though and are great if u dont mind errors.

when i tried debain woody r2, i thought it was a bit of a joke with its installer and it was like something out of the past - it took me a while to get it to work, and when i tried woody r4, it was the same but with a few updates. Sarge is much much better.

Now slackware... it has excelent hardware support, top notch package managment with slapt-get, iv been using it for more than a year and it hasn't ever crashed, has alot of software included, easy to use once you get used to it, fast, stable.... My only anoyance is the non-standard-linux booting folder (rc.d) but is easy to work around.

So basically out of all the OSs iv tried:
1 SLACKWARE - wins the best linux distro award with me
2 knoppix - best live CD
3 yopper
4 debian sarge
5 FreeBSD

Yes, Slackware is an excellent distro. But, keep in mind, not everyone's needs are the same. Me myself, I can't stand Slackware (I say its excellent because it must be for so many people to swear by it, I realize that just because I don't like it doesn't mean it isn't good, so don't flame me). Me myself, like you, settled on a distro that is just excellent for me. That is Ubuntu. I think it is excellent because it is ready to use out of the box, has a clean, uncluttered desktop and has an awesome, responsive community.

However, some people (espescially those who don't like Gnome) would find Ubuntu ugly, boring looking and lacking choice (Gnome is the only DE/WM that is supported with security updates available).

Very cool post. I agree from the exact opposite angle. I've been playing with an install of Ubuntu and I can't stand it. That's what made me look at this post - I was just thinking 'Amen, it *is* the one' because I've realized I actually kinda hate Linux - in that I can't stand *any* distros I've tried but Slack, LFS, and Gentoo and even Gentoo isn't my cup of tea. But it's definitely just the 'one' for me and for alaindu and for this person or that - not for everybody. And I definitely see what people see in Ubuntu and I'm glad there's a variety of distros out there so hopefully everybody can find their 'one'. It'd be cool if we could all love and hate distros without anybody taking it personally. (I fail at that sometimes, myself when I lose perspective.)

My main problem with Ubuntu was, as always, an excess of 'philosophy', a straightjacketed feeling with package management and few options, and an absolute riot of symlinks and special mechanisms (symlinks, tarballs and executables in /etc/*alternatives* - I mean, come on) - just a feeling of opacity. But if it works for you, it must be a remarkable 'fire and forget' solution that feels nicely integrated and thoughtfully put-together. I almost hated to break the package management open into 'universe' just to get my politically incorrect mp3s to work. Now, *everything* I rip is ogg, but that doesn't help my backlog of mp3s and I'm not converting from lossy to lossy to just be 'correct'.

But, as far as Slackware goes, I actually don't use all that much of Slackware - I just upgraded a second install to -current with the works - KDE and everything - and I realize how much I ordinarily chuck out. My main Slack10 install has almost nothing from /xap and not much from /ap and so on with the rest. I junk *all* of Slackware's wm/de's and slap on IceWM and PekWM. But I have the freedom to do that in Slack. It still feels like Slack because of the core - from the LILO loader to the simple init scripts (look ma, no links! - well, okay, rc.0/6) to the core CLI utilities and doing everything important with shell and editor. From that wonderful, open, simple, transparent base, I compile and 'checkinstall' my graphical userland and have a ball.

Anyway - my list:

Slackware - yup, the one.

LFS - if anything happens to Slack, I'm going to take my Slack tree, the LFS book, and spend time coming up with the best pseudo-Slack I can. Pslack! As was, my own LFS worked but wasn't real inspiring.

Gentoo - nifty. I like it okay, but don't think I could use it as a primary.

FreeBSD - kinda weird, kinda cool, but I doubt it.

Everything else - pains me to say it, but I'd use Windows first.

Well, maybe not. I mean, I guess I'd use Vector or something, but that's my feeling, anyway.

One thing I'd disagree with alaindu with, though - package management (supposed to be their great strengths) is one of the things I don't much care for in Gentoo/FreeBSD and I'd never use the swaret/slapt-get stuff on Slack, either. (So, naturally, synaptic/apt-get didn't thrill me on Ubuntu anymore than it had on Debian. - Seeing some of the monster dependency lists Ubuntu wanted to drag down for some apps I know don't need a third of that stuff when you compile it yourself was kind of amazing.)

So, see? - even Slackware is many things to many people. Why it's the one for me and the one for alaindu is different, so no surprise other people would have entirely different 'one's.

lol, yea i know what you mean about the deps with apt-get style management - i used slapt-get to install guard dog (ipchains gui) and included in the dependency list was:
kde GAMES
kde accessibility

??!!
but i defenatly think slackwares tgz's are excelent - and the whole installpkg / removepkg thing - but i do use slapt-get sometimes for packages that arn't on the slackware site/linux packages site and have lots of deps.

Heh, I started on fedora and found it buggier then windows (on average). After a month of screwing with fedora I moved over to slackware and I freaking love every bit of it (i love the BSD style init system). After about 2 months of slackware I took up gentoo, it was fun and fancy, but it wasn't my cup of tea. My list fallows

1. Slackware | nothing has come close to how I feel about slackware
2. FreeBSD | Its not linux, its BSD and I love this OS almost as much as I love slackware
3. Gentoo | Its nice, its fancy, but compile times are annoying as hell.
4. OpenBSD | Its the most secure OS on this planet, nuff said
5. NetBSD | NetBSD 2.0 has been proven as the fastest of all the BSD's

You'll notice I am a person for BSD style things (Gentoo for portage, Slackware for the BSD style init system and BSD its self).

Interesting thread. I am always interested in what drives people towards 'brand loyalty', as these discussions often go. I've never bought into the Ford vs. Chevy arguments, as these things often boil down to irrational flame wars, resembling lines of protestors waving their flags and poster boards, trying to out-yell each other. This is an excellent list of people giving their reasons for liking particular distributions. Linux distros tend to evolve around a particular ideal and approach, for the most part, and if they are going to succeed, those become a point for which they are loved. Many of them have great merits, and a few have a bit too many liabilities.

Nonetheless, I use Fedora (3) at home, mostly because of the ease of administration on a home computer. My wife has a constant low level anger at having to reboot to use Microsoft Publisher, and I can't get her to "like" Scribus or OpenOffice.org, so generally keeping things easy, despite a small lag in performance is acceptable. By the way, I find the latest Fedora to be significantly faster and more stable than the two predecessors.
At work I have used Slackware, Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, and now Gentoo. The Slackware and Debian communities are awesome and I have no issues with either destros beyond their installers. They are stable and fast and do what they should. Both have good package management. I found Ubuntu a very refreshing flavor of Debian, and highly recommend it to home users, in particular people who aren't going to challenge themselves to learn the underpinnings of their OS, whether it be Windows or BSD. It's clean and stable and not confusing, with one application for any purpose. With additional software repositories, it is quite expandable. Suse was fast, in my perception, and slick, but I found it limitting. Hard to explain exactly why. I've been using Gentoo for a while now, and I have to say, the documentation on the web is phenomenal, encourages learning, produces a fast, stable system, and is incredibly customizeable for a desktop system. I haven't used it as a server environment, where I have stuck with CentOS, the RHEL rebuild. I've never needed to reboot one of those machines. Gentoo is really nice, with the lone, already mentioned excruciating compile times, even on my P4-2ghz-1gigRAM machine. Once it's been built though, that becomes not very limitting, as I now have a stable system without needing to add lots of software, and I can update packages at night.

So that's my 2 cents.

Ben