I still think openSuSE is the most polished distro, even when I love Ubuntu and Mandriva.

Slackware, Debian and Gentoo are probably better but Ubuntu does what they don't, bringing a Linux system to the mass (read non-geeks).

Not so easy!

I've loved PCLinuxOS 2007, Kubuntu 8.04 and Sabayon.
Real cool Installation and Desktop UI plus Graphics - openSuSE 11.1
but again, Numero Uno for my development is Fedora Core 9; just recently installed FC10.

Fastest evolutionary & potential Linux challenger (?) - OpenSolaris 2008.11 (stunned by the quality of the work. Earlier i used to work on Solaris SDE 10 2006. Frankly no comparison between those two!)

Non-Penguin - Leopard
Sham of the Year - Vista

Why doesn't Kubuntu have an option of it's own?

p.s. I voted Ubuntu.

Fedora.

Although not my fave distro, I have to vote Mandriva given the choices. Excellent, excellent hardware support. I can install it on anything where others fail. Very polished. The only thing that keeps it from being the best of the best is the sh*tty package management. Now if they adopted synaptic ...

Suse is a close second. Package management is better than Mandriva but I really dislike the installer.

As much as I like past versions of Mepis and Pclos, I don't think they are really in the running anymore. One release every couple of years is not going to keep up with changing hardware.

Arch linux!!
Its like: slackware - ubuntu - gentoo combined!!
why like slackware? Because it lets you configure just about anything, no need for gui.
why like ubuntu? Because it has an package installer/updater almost as great (no so many packages).
why like gentoo? you can compile your own packages if you want, and you can add flags!

And its rolling release, no need to reinstall every time you want to update....

I like slackware

Mint...
its completely 'Desktop'

Mandriva and DreamLinux aslo good
but Mint have more Easy to Do things.

sidux, voting for Debian.

Use other distro's, but this is my favourite.

Xandros 4.5 OCE-very easy setup for wireless and printing. Debian "etch" based so I voted Debian.

ArchLinux was a major discovery for me when I decided to try it out. I think its <ONE-OF-THE> the most perfect binary distribution for desktops. It has simplicity and ease of use written all over it. And it also makes the single BEST distro for laptops.

Fedora 'til the bitter end!!!!!!

There are four things that do not exchange or borrow: my woman, my daughter, my car and "my" Slackware!
(translated by google)

Cheers to all slackers and the others too!