Without a doubt ----SimplyMEPIS.

It configures everything on my laptop - including the Winmodem without any additional driver downloads etc.

Fedora, it has changed my (computing) life.

Over the years I have tried several distros, There is no overall best but there are great choices for each task. I chose Ubuntu because it has realy shined as a new distro and fixed most of the problems ppl complain about when switching to Linux but I wouldn't format my servers and use it there as right now I feel their are better distros for that task.

Anyone who uses Fedora should try Ubuntu, you will fel so much more free.

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I know many very experienced users who also like Mandrake and similar "user friendly" distros. Can you imagine a poll anything at all like this in the Micro$loth world. They just don't have the choices. "Gee..., what's your favorite wm in Windoze XP????" "What's your favorite desktop environment in Windows 2000??" There's a distro, environment, windowmanager, editor (any emacs/vi flamewars develop yet on this poll ;o) ), etc. for virtually every linux user out there. And..., more to come, I would imagine <|8^)
Best..........

bb4win
bluebox
Cloud:9ine
core
geOShell
LiteShell
Litestep
Open Vision
Outsider
PureLS
Serenade
SharpE

http://www.shellfront.org/

A million reasons Windows sucks and people keep picking the wrong ones.

Slackware.. hands down. Although I never tried Vector..

slackware is and always will be the 'official' linux distro by which all others are measured.

It is the closest to lfs or 'pure' linux you can get.

Conectiva Linux 10!!!!!

Ubuntu -- a distro miles ahead of the others in tons of areas.

Packed with a lot of software in one CD which installs itself and the software, a superior package system known as apt-get, a fabulous "human" and "freedom" philosophy it is built upon, one of the fastest growing communities with an active mailing list, forums, and huge IRC channel, built as a joint operation by various GNOME and Debian developers and sponsored by the millionaire Mark Shuttleworth, as well as awesome docs and unmatched stability.

Why use anything else?

==========================
I'm just guessing, of course, but I'll bet more windows users use OpenOffice as opposed to M$ Office than have ever even tried one of the above. Although I haven't really used Windows since very late 90's, I obviously know hundreds of folks who do (most folks I know). I don't know any who use any of those (which is not to say they don't exist as viable alternatives), but for most windows users, theres are not real options (I wonder what percentage actually do use any of those??? ;-) )

PCLinuxOS rocks!!! Give the LiveCD a spin and see how you like it....

Ubuntu for me, no second thoughts. A polished free distro with GREAT community.

I vote for Conectiva 10

I love the look and feel of this distro.

It has synaptic and webmin

Because it is a founding member of United Linux it also has IBM (moral support) and hardware compatibility.

I would recommend this for new users.

Nah, I suspect almost no one does. But they *could*. I played with bblean on W2K but the irony is that I don't much mind the Explorer shell as an interface. As a program it's pretty lame in terms of performance and so on - and the fact that it's also IE, in essence, is a disaster. And the fact that most configuration is done through GUIs which muck about in a binary registry is a disaster. And the fact that it's a closed-source system is lame. And that it costs a lot and puts you at the whims of a company that has only its interests at heart sucks. And on and on and on.

But I don't hate taskbars or anything and, if I did, I can hide it or replace it even on Windows. Totally irrelevant to the thread and your main point, though, which is that Linux rocks. I just have these random fits of sloppiness and then these random fits of being a stickler for accuracy. Don't mind me.

Gentoo for the last year and a half. Knocked Mandrake off my machine.