Title says everything. I want to know which is the best KDE distro. Yes, I know that the answer depends on the personal liking but if someone knows where to get stable distro with fairly new KDE (4.8) please let me know.

rpm based distros (Fedora, openSUSE, PCLOS...) are out of the question, and Kubuntu... Sooooo, start with your suggestions... now!

Thanks!

EDIT: LOL, wrong subforum... Sorry about that! I didn't see that I was in non *nix forum.

I think the burden is on you to tell us what you don't like about Kubuntu (#2 distro in the world) or Fedora (#3 distro in the world) so that we have a better idea of your needs/preferences.

Without more info I'd recommend you take a look at Linux Mint (#1 distro in the world), Debian (#4), or OpenSUSE (#5). (edit: never mind OpenSUSE, you said "no RPM" for some reason...)

KDE is KDE no matter which distro you use, therefore I recommend looking at other factors like frequency of updates, friendliness of the community/forums, etc.

I think this was asked a few weeks ago, but still...

My rule is "use a distro with its default GUI." That's the one that most people will have, that gets the most feedback, and that gets the most care and attention from the developers. Currently, for example, Kubuntu is the worst version of Ubuntu.

I think the best distros offering KDE are CentOS, Kororaa, Mepis, Mint, Salix, and OpenSUSE. If you don't like rpm, that leaves Mepis, Mint, and Salix. Mepis is a KDE default and Salix is based on Slackware, which is a KDE default. Take your pick!

In my experience Kubuntu is too buggy, period... At least the previous editions were. If the new (12.04) is stable (which LTS should be) please do let me know and I'll try it... otherwise it is waste of bandwidth.
I really like CentOS but it is pain in the rear to make it work as a desktop, and to make my wireless card to work. openSUSE!? I gave it 4 chances and every time it disappointed me... Once GRUB recognized 3 windows installations, even though I had only one, once installation failed and left me with broken MBR... Fedora is just a playground for Red Hat and thus unstable. Plus newer version comes out every 6 months, and that is one of the things I don't like...
Frequency of updates: well, I like Debian stable and CentOS approach... less frequent updates and longer support is a big plus.

Mint (Maya - 13) is only available in Cinnamon and Mate edition (at least I think so)... If I'm wrong let me know. I've used Salix XFCE and when I installed KDE i couldn't enable Kwin effects, which is the main reason i want KDE... I'm sick of the spartan look and I just want something that works and helps me relax. Slackware, well, I'm using it currently but it's future is questionable, plus it is hard to maintain it.
I've heard of Mepis but haven't tried it yet... I just might download it in next few days, and try it (even though it uses older KDE, but I guess it is the price of stability, just like Debian and CentOS)

Those are 2 good choices. I personally use and recommend both Debian Stable and CentOS.

The only problem is that you won't get KDE 4.8. It is weird, in one paragraph you say it's most important to have the latest KDE with eye candy; in another paragraph you say it's most important to have an extremely stable, well-tested system with minimal updates and extended long-term support...

If you read my original post you will see that i wrote:

I prefer stability over bleeding edge... Even KDE 4.5 is eye candy but if I can have stable and eye candy - great... I've heard the best about Pardus (stable and relatively new software) but it looks like it is dead project (according to the mailing lists) - link.

Well, KDE 4.8 was released in January 2012, so you'd need to find a project that can develop, test, and release a stable, long-term-support distro in 4 months.

You could go on distrowatch.com and search for distros using KDE 4.8 (the list is not long, and you've already ruled out half of them). Or grab the latest KDE here and compile it on any distro.

Yeah... sounds like mission impossible. I guess I'll try Simply Mepis and if I like it, it will stay there.

I prefer to avoid compiling big projects like KDE since it takes a lot of time... But thanks for the suggestions. I'll go to distrowatch, check the KDE default distros and try to find one or two more candidates besides Mepis...

Best regards!

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux-Distributions and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Seriously, Why?

It's not: see my review.
The Debian edition of Mint has KDE, but that's rolling release.
Mepis comes out every year: they take Debian Stable and any things from Testing that they feel confident about, which seems a sensible policy.

I had nothing but bad experiences with rpm based distros... It's probably my hardware's fault but deb and source based distros work like magic.

Could you provide the link? I thought it would be in your blog entries but you don't have any.
I'm not a fan of rolling release distros... I like Arch, a lot, but the rolling release is what's keeping me away from it.
Yeah, looks like Mepis could be the one... I've already tested it in Virtual Box. Tomorrow should be the D day
I'll also try kubuntu after you send me a link to your review. Thank you and cheers!

have you ever tried debian stable, I bet it wouldnt detect your hardware 100%. the point you bring up has nothing to do with rpm. you shouldn't limit your choices because of this. contrary to popular Google results. rpm is a very good package manager and most of the arguments you commonly see on Google in regards to rpm vs deb are now redundant.

i will also recommended mepis. I personally don't like dpkg and for this reason tend to avoided deb based distros, but mepis is a quality product (except for the way it handles the synaptics toichpad and Intel integrated graphics). mepis still remains one of my favourite distros and my favorite deb based distro. being based off debian stable is a big plus in my book.

also the mepis community are very nice and very helpful. hard to beat.

p.s.
on an untelated note. I went through your past posts. if you can install salix, you can install slackware. its practically the same installer.

Yes, I've tried Debian stable... Only thing that didn't work is my wireless... but during the installation it did offer me to navigate to external source to install the .deb package (but I didn't have it so I had to install it later via LAN). But neither did openSUSE, nor Fedora, nor Centos detected my wireless... PCLOS doesn't have a 64 bit edition and that is a big minus!

I already have Slackware... installation is, IMHO, simple and easy. But I'm tired of resolving dependencies by my own... I also had Salix but I couldn't manage to get the Kwin effects to work... It could be (and probably is) problem with my intel graphics card. (little digression now) Since kernel 2.6.something my screen would go blank on boot and I couldn't turn it back on. Solution was to add acpi_osi=Linux as a kernel parameter. Even now it screen goes blank but with Fn keys i can increase the brightness.

Thank you for your suggestions. If you do know rpm based distro that's stable enough for every day usage and that's KDE default let me know and I'll try it... Cheers

opensuse has always been KDE centric
just like fedora has been Gnome centric

so if you do not mind a os that is a bit bloated , install opensuse