If you had to stick with one distro for years, which would you choose? I've been a Fedora guy for years. I have other installs but my main PC has been Fedora.

I'm running an old Fedora right now because I was away for several months. Now I'm debating on whether to upgrade to Fedora 20, or go with a different distro. I'm mostly looking for something with Xfce.

I've already tried a ton of distros and most of them lost my attention. Right now I have tied Fedora with LMDE, with Xubuntu in 3rd place.

For all it's quirks and bleeding edgeness, Fedora has had a solid config for my tastes. This is the setup that I know best. Servers I have set up have all been RedHat based. The downside is all the clean installs and preference configurations are a pain in the ass. This is what is driving me away from Fedora.

LMDE is the new one for me. I'm feeling cautious about using this as my main OS because I've only used it lightly, but the rolling release model seems very attractive to me after all the clean install stuff. That got my attention, along with the idea of a filtered debian testing as an attempt for less breakages. I won't be using debian stable and its ancient packages; that seems more of a server OS. It also got my attention that SteamOS uses debian.

Xubuntu I have used on laptops over the years, and I like the fact that (arguably) most 3rd party packages out there are made for ubuntu; the PPA stuff. Overall this seems like a good choice (along with other variants like Xfce mint, but that's just ubuntu anyway), but it's not a rolling distro.

So, what do you think? Which one of these would you pick as a main OS?

None, I would go for Slackware: Comes with XFCE, is very stable, easy to configure and modify as I see fit, no clean installs necessary when upgrading to a new version.
If I had to choose from the distros you look at I would probably go for LMDE (though if I had to choose a Debian based XFCE distro I would rather go for the original and opt for Debian XFCE (Stable with backported packages).

I've spent years on debian already, and like TobiSGD I'd go for debian over LMDE. Though I tend to use 'sid'/'unstable' not 'stable'.

If it was just down to those 3, I'd go for fedora. LMDE doesnt do it for me, and xubuntu, bah, in some ways rather use microsoft windows than canonical.

Greetings
I don't think it is possible to give you a definitive answer without knowing more of what you use computers for. Aside from the most glaring difference between distros, package managers, the main difference is bundled applications and new/upgrade availability.

So far though, it seems you have some combination of serious server work and typical home use, don't like clean installs and all the preference editing. First on my list for that would be Slackware since regardless of use, from essentially embedded, through Home, to solid server, all the basics are identical with far fewer compromises and limitations of others. It is so configurable and so vanilla there are only 2 versions - 32bit and 64bit. Slackware doesn't presuppose what you intend to do with it and just leaves "all the doors open" (not security-wise, btw, all services are by default "off" unless you choose to turn them "on").

That said, after having used it since 1998, I doubt I am very objective about it's learning curve, especially for people used to distros that are more into "holding your hand" and willing to accept the tradeoff of a little less work over a little less power and choice. Slackware's documentation is very good, so maybe you're willing to either research it or give it a try.

If you don't mind a little hand-holding and prefer a little less work and learning curve, but still want a non-intrusive, simple and solid distro with both server and home versions and an auto-dependency resolving package manager I would seriously consider SolydXK. Even though it is actually newer than Mint, it is organized and pared down so that it behaves like Mint's eldest (more mature) brother that still offers both KDE and Xfce.

Slackware.

Slackware

I spend a fair amount of time trying other distros, but I always come back to Slackware.

I have used Slackware for 616 days and I see no reason to change.

It is venerable

Feared by many, respected by all.

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Slackware. For stability, configureability, software choice and package management i have yet to see its equal, and i have tried a lot of distros and have been using linux since the 90's.

I've always been in the Red Hat camp: good configuration tools and great package management. I started with Red Hat, then Fedora 1-14, then CentOS to avoid Gnome 3. I'm hoping CentOS will have a decent Mate or Xfce by the time version 6 reaches the use-by date: if it doesn't, I'll probably use Salix (Slackware for lazy slackers), which I already have on my laptop.

As for your options — Fedora, LMDE, and Xubuntu, I wouldn't use any of them: not stable enough and too changeable.

I think it depends on what you want out of your distro.

I've been having a good old time running Debian stable for the last few months. Between backports and the things I grab from Nix, I haven't been wanting for much more in the category of bleeding edge. This setup isn't for everyone, though.

Slackware works great, and you get the nice benefit of The Dependency Resolver Is You, so if you want a new library, you're free to bump it on your own. There's a lot of sanity in the way things in Slack are setup, so that's often a plus. Possible downsides are that you do visit the command line from time to time(?!).

Looking into something more bleeding edge stuff, check out NixOS and it's package manager, Nix. Nix is a functional package management tool, which to you means that you can add and remove packages without it screwing up the rest of your operating system. A new tool called Guix is being written in Guile Scheme for the GNU system, which was inspired by Nix. This is pretty new stuff and is worth studying in free time, at least!

I like Debian and Slackware because they're incredibly stable platforms to build upward from. Ubuntu stuff seems to follow a release cycle, as do Fedora. Things like LMDE seem interesting, but the idea of my system constantly churning out packages doesn't put me at ease. If you so wish, you can stick to Deb or Slack for long after the recent release, which means to me that I get to spend a lot of time doing things I want before it's time to upgrade to a newer package set.

For me it'd be Slackware because once I've set it up and installed the tools I use, it works reliably for a long time and does not get in the way. That's where I feel at home. Funnily enough, installing/setting up a distro like Ubuntu/Mint would pose a greater challenge for me.

Speaking of things Debian, I do like to keep my finger on the pulse of the Debian world, so I usually have an installation of Debian sid somewhere, whether in the form of a LinuxBBQ release, or my current incarnation, my framebuffer/tmux, no X setup.

Thanks for suggesting Slackware, but I won't be using it. Maybe in the future but not today. When I tried Slackware I could imagine a cartoon character somewhere saying that I should be using LFS and that Slackware does too much for you. But more importantly, I need a distro I can use on my machine and install on other people's. Does anyone recommend installing and maintaining Slackware on a ton of users' machines? I see the benefit of learning the configuration of Linux, but in my time of using Fedora I also see how quickly this changes. Slackware is a distro I would use to tinker on the side when I want to duplicate effort. For better or worse, my philosophy with Linux has shifted away from duplicated effort. I get the feeling that I'd have to spend late night with Slackware getting something as simple as ibus to work like I'm used to. At least that's been my experience on other distros. Still, I'll keep it in mind for the future, since so many recommend it.

What are my needs? I use creative tools, including a wacom tablet, and lately I've been playing steam games. Some sound usage with jack. The occasional experimental app that needs to be installed from source. The rest of my usage is standard desktop fare.

@xyzone - Hopefully you noticed that SolydXK comes with both PlayOnLinux and Steam, so you can play the ever expanding native Linux games as well as Windows games, even DX-11 ones. The default desktop greeter has 4 or 5 tabs, with the top one Community for question and answer, and the 2nd entry is for 3rd party drivers. This is but a sampling of the kind of rather unobtrusive hand-holding it does. I don't know what it is about Linux coders from the Netherlands, but they sure seem to get it right.

The thing about SolydXK is that it's a small distro. For me, small distros are a thing of the past. The less man hours a distro receives, the more buglet minefields it can have.