Fedora all the way.

I've always been a slackware fan, but I think the Ubuntu team has taken linux to a whole new level with usability and popularity. I remember the days of having to debug problems for hours, and now things seem to work with little effort at all. Of course that's not all of Ubuntu's doing, but I think they deserve some credit for getting us there.

Slackware. Speed, stability, functionality, and believe it or not, ease of use. Balance between extreme stability and up-to-date software.

I've tried other distros but I keep coming back to Vector, like Slackware with a little less bulk

I keep coming back to Xubuntu (9.1) - have tried most. I run Puppy from a USB thumb drive for backup imaging and restoring, but Xubuntu with Compiz for everyday use (both on Dell Inspiron 531 desktop and Acer laptop). Love the XFCE interface and responsiveness of Thunar vs Nautilus.

Still dual boot Linux / XP on my desktop (cause I've been too lazy to remove XP), but Linux only on laptop.

arch, for getting rid of the re-install "every so many months" cycle, pacman -Syu for the win

Squeeze please

I'm as polarized by this as my two contenders are. openSuSE is where I started back in the 9 days. Linux Mint has been the default install for anyone but my own machine. ^ machines here, two OpenSuSE and 4 Mint. Seems we are talking "desktop", not LAMP,DHCP Server, SQUID Proxy etc.. If this poll is an indication of where the immediate future of Linux is best catered for.... LINUX MINT (root account enabled for those that need it and know how to do it).

Ubuntu ,Fedora

Difficult choice being a natural distro hopper myself

Up to late last year i would have said Ubuntu hands down, i'm not a n00b i have used Slack and Deb happily for years, but i think that as a desktop distro it should just work with minimal fuss.

I have installed Karmic on my wifes laptop and she is happily using it and honestly can't see the difference using Linux over windows (bar the lack of crashes)

But i found that Karmic for me is just too buggy and yes i have took the time to report the bugs! I just think that there were too many problems (ie broken sound, my laptop wont even shut down on Karmic!!)

I think that Fedora and Mandriva are honestly the best with their respective latest releases however Mandriva pips fedora to the post (only just) I have been using 2010 KDE (usually a gnome person, go figure!) and i am very impressed, the only thing i can fault it on is the lack of certain software in the repos.

I did like OpenSUSE as well but i found it a little slow on my system whereas Mandriva flies!!

I am always with Fedora

Personally I can't see why some people like Fedora. All it did was either lock up on me, or have SELinux complain at me for everything I tried to do.

I keep coming back to Debian based systems too though, there's a stability about them (With the exceptions of Ubuntu Karmic, and Linux Mint) that just works well for me. From my breif foray into the world of other means of package management, I wish someone would port Yum to work with deb, or at least on top of apt-get.
Karmic was a mistake, I think - too much went wrong with it, and it put me off Ubuntu entirely. Linux Mint I've never seen the point to. It's Ubuntu with some extras installed that anyone could install, with a handful of custom made packages. That's it. Ubuntu for the even more lazy who don't want to do it themselves.

I voted Slackware, but I'm looking at FreeBSD and LinuxMint for 2010.

-JJ

Oh I know its the wrong place to say this...But YAST. Thats all I'll say. Y A S T. (and I voted for Mint)

Actually, one of my favourites wasn't listed: #!CrunchBang. But I voted for Ubuntu because I find its netbook version (Ubuntu Netbook Remix) to be the most useful, best laid out distro for a small display netbook. If I was voting for most improved, I would be tempted to choose openSUSE because version 11.2 is the best implementation I've seen for KDE, and its speed is tremendously improved over version 11.0. (I couldn't get 11.1 to work.)