Recently, my netbook, an Asus Eee PC 901 started playing up with Ubuntu 11.10, due to the kernel.
I got loads of kernel panics, which is worse as my netbook is my main development machine (for the Crimson Swarm), so I was looking for a new distro. I would prefer it to have a pre 3.0.0-12 kernel, and have a search (Dash like, or Elementary OS Slingshot like). It can be any desktop environment you like, but I would prefer it to have the things I said about. Bonus points if it has GTK3 and a software center (Not really needed, I can use Synaptic, just Fedora's package manager I find quite hard and slow, so for finding package names an easy interface would be good. It should be able to run Geany and Gedit (Or alternatives in Qt), and be rather fast to boot. Ubuntu currently manager 36 seconds, so any less that that would be good, but I don't really care. I had a look at:
Elementary OS (Jupiter seems okay, but no search feature so I looked at Luna, which has Slingshot and plank, and basically anything I need... but it comes out next year)
Ubuntu 11.10 (Crashes, else perfect)
Kubuntu 11.04 or openSUSE or another KDE distro with take off (Would be fine, but I need to find a distro with KDE which would be easy to set up (I can use openSUSE, but I find the way it manages packages quite hard. If anyone has any tips on this, please say))
Fedora 15 (Gnome 3, so old Gnome, see openSuSE. Also, I find rather hard to get around)
Bodhi (Seems good, but no search)

Does anyone else have any ideas? If it is a KDE one, could you also mention some Geany/Gedit Qt alternatives?

Debian stable maybe?

Easy is in the eye of the beholder. They can all be learnt.

Arch comes to mind (fastest booting when tweaked right, gentoo might get a tad faster).

Hmm... I have not had a panic since I removed the old 3.0.0-12 packages, but if I get another one I will probably go with Debian Stable or Arch.... Unless there are other ideas?

This is also for when I get a new SSD for the netbook soon I am going to try a new OS, so even if it fixed it, suggestions will still be nice.

I think your strongest need is a good file search app, yes?
however, "full" distros might list such an app, while some of the bare-bones distros will not list one, even if the search app is in repository. That means you can't conveniently and accurately compare the distros.

if you sometimes run the distros you mention in your post, perhaps some file search apps are in those repositories? you could test many search apps to find your favorite.
then check whether nice-looking distros can install the search app.

By searching, I rather ment searching for applications, such as how Ubuntu's dash works. You click the button, type part of the applications name, press enter and there it is. KDE has Takeoff, which does more or less the same thing, Elementary OS is going to have Slingshot. I am thinking about possibly Bodhi with something like Synapse or Gnome Do, but it seems not to display GTK apps very well. Thanks for the tip though.