I have used Linux Mint 8 KDE for a while and fell in love with it. But I recently began to explore other distro's to find one that adopts KDE a little bit better. (Kmint has a lot of GTK+ apps in it...)

After trying Kubuntu 10.04 (crashes all the time) and Fedora 13 KDE spin(slower than windows 7!!!), I can honestly say that they EPICALLY failed.

I am looking to give the soon to be released Sidux release a go along with openSUSE when it comes out in July.

Are there any other KDE distro's that you guys would recommend?
(I need one that is fine for intermediate users as I am no guru, and I need easy access to codecs, the nvidia driver, and skype).

You asked for it: Mandriva & PClinuxOS

Sorry I forgot to put my reason why: Because they just work.

My favorite KDE distro is Slackware 13.1.

Why? Because you get KDE the way it was supposed to be, without any custom themes/branding and patches only applied when necessary.

Mandriva doesn't have free 64 bit

and I am unsure how many packages PClinuxOS has available for it. Also, when I ran PClinuxOS 2010, it felt kinda slow...

I heard it is hard getting packages for Slackware, and I need easy installs and to have quick access to codecs and drivers.

What do you mean, of course it does!

It has quite a few.

Compared to...?? I hope you're not judging it based on running it in 'live' cd mode!

Both my suggestions easily fit this criteria.

PClinuxOS ran slow compared to linux mint.

I remember when I gave it a go on my laptop, there was something that didn't feel right about it, I forgot what though, I am thinking I will give it a go and see how I like it. I think it's because it felt stiff with the default install, I might just have to customize it a bit then =).

and I just went to the mandriva download page, you need to pay a subscription fee to get the 64 bit.

No you don't. Go here: http://www2.mandriva.com/downloads/?p=linux-free and scroll to the bottom of the page.

thank you, that was kind of hidden...what's the downside of not paying.

The downside is, you don't get any support from Mandriva. The upside is, you get support from the community instead

Is there 64 bit for PClinuxOS???

What are the main differences between mandriva and PClinuxOS?

I totally forgot to mention...I would like 64 bit, so if PClinuxOS doesn't have that, sadly it will not work for me most likely. (and the machines I have that are 32 bit, well are not fast enough to handle how "heavy" it is, unless the E17 version is a lot faster than its KDE counterpart.

Not to my knowledge.

For me it's the package managers (Mandriva: rpmdrake, PCLinuxOS: synaptic) and available pre-packaged applications. For example, PClinuxOS has Skype available in its repositories, Mandriva doesn't.

Todays package count is 11,887.

The 32 Bits PCLinuxOS works OK on 64 Bits computers.
I.e. you don't need a 64 Bits OS
to run Linux on a 64 Bits processor.
..

True, but 64 bit OS's run faster (and so do their applications) or so I am told. I also have 4+ gigs of ram. Without a 64bit OS it's pointless to have that much.

I am going to give Mandriva a go to see what it's like.

sidux is "rolling release" so you can install it today if you like, no need to wait for the next release. Just install the Preview and it will automagically upgrade to the final release through dist-upgrade.

Does that mean I should install the 2010 edition?

Also, When I checked out the mirrors for north america for the "preview" edition (I assume this is their beta/rolling release), I saw only XFCE Lite and KDE Lite. What is the difference between KDE-Lite and KDE-Full?