trooper
+1

you might check the (unfficial) debian-live to know if it suits your needs:
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current-live/
whats the thing bout debian-stable is that it is stable. stable like a rock.
mint is very good, and has got compiz out of box. bout its stability i dont know (but its based on ubuntu, which somehow is based on debian... so that is a very long way. why not use the roots?)
sidux sure aint very stable... besides some other un-nice things one might say about it (your mileage may vary).
knoppix is a good one too, in my opinion, i would install the lxde-version and put gnome or xfce on top of it.
ubuntu ? why not, it seems to rock for a lot of people.And it comes with a long-time-support.

as you may have allready found out: i cant tell a thing bout the none-debian distros...there might be some perls among them (sabayon and that...)

Whoops! I forgot to tell you I've already picked a distribution. I chose Sidux xfce 64 which to me seems like the best xfce distribution if you at least know a little bit how to handle Linux. It doesn't have compiz, or proprietary drivers and codec but it has very good 64bit support. Gnome is weird, KDE has failed me too many times and xfce is fast. That pretty much makes it the best distribution ever. Now I've tried, Mandriva, openSUSE, Mint, Vector Linux, CentOS, ubuntu and xubuntu.

Just a sidenote.

Most of the distros you named just now have xfce as installation option. CentOS has it, that is 100%. This is not to change your mind, but just to keep you fully informed if you chosen Sidux over some other distro only because of the xfce.

I would go with Ubuntu 9.10 64bit ... I put the beta on another machine, and have been really impressed with it... And I don't usually like any Canonical based distro.

It was a fast install, and the LiveCD feature was quicker then normal... It even had proper updated Intel video drivers that worked for once.

I would not count *buntu in stable distributions. Not even the Fedora. To much bugs for my taste. Once Canonical and *buntu community decide to fix bugs 2-3 years old I will think on considering them responsible distro publishers. Red Hat had to employ additional people to start working on the bugs dating back to FC7-FC8 to be able to produce stable RHEL 6 from current Fedora branch.

Enthusiasts are fascinated with bells and whistles, business people are won by stability first. Linux should be about stability and as less bugs as possible if we want to win over current Windows users, not with shiny new desktop wallpaper or 3D buttons.

FYI, Gentoo has everything that you want except a GUI installer. Installing Gentoo is tedious, but easy. Installing programs is very, very easy. Gentoo is tide around a strict package policy and each version for each program gets scrutinized before being stated as stable. There is no distributions that I know that has this as a feature. Every distribution will provide you to every version of the program and you have to guess the stability and reliability for every version. Gentoo just states which one is stable to be used for production systems.

Gentoo has proprietary drivers included in its package database with out adding any servers.

There are many reasons why Linux is not winning over and/or never ever win over Windows. One reason is Linux is not easy to configure. Some distributions includes GUI programs to help with configuring, but there are consequences using them such as screwing up the configuration files or forcing you to not edit them. Linux is not a desktop OS which means it does not have a low latency kernel to handle desktop applications in real time. Every program in Linux is quadruple check through the kernel which makes it have very high latency. Programs is not always cut and dry easy in Linux. The user have to add servers and stability of these additional servers are questionable. Top of all the open source community has Office suites that is just pathetic and yes this means OpenOffice is the most pathetic Office suite that the open source community should be ashamed of them selves. OpenOffice does not even format its Office files correctly to be a 1 to 1 to MS Office suite which is the standard office suite.

Vad mumlar du om? As I would have said if you knew our beautiful language. Everyone who has used a computer know how to use ubuntu. The only problem is that ubuntu never ships with computers and installing a new OS is tricky for people who doesn't know what the BIOS. These GUI configuration tools does not hurt the system. Linux is a desktop OS and it is also one of the fastest. I've never added a server for a program manually except for some update. Do you really think Google would put money in Chrome OS if it wasn't usable to 90% of the population? OO.o is great it handles ppt way better then MS Office handles .odf .

Forget about Ubuntu. They end of life their versions barely 2 years after they are released. I'm STILL fuming about them dropping Hardy so fast. I have 2 laptops that have become essentially paperweights or have to be air gapped from the net if I want to use them thanx to Ubuntu's dropping Hardy. Both came with Hardy and a whole slew of propriatory drivers that haven't made their way to current distros yet.

Who wants to reinstall every 2 years or less anyway? The support in the Ubuntu forums is the worst I've seen for any Linux distro. I've used Redhat/Fedora, Suse, CentOS, general Debian and non-distro specific forums. On Ubuntu's forums you get a special kind of arrogance and non-helpfulness. Log into their IRC channel and just watch how many folks are ignored or told tough there is no answer too your question, now go away. It is the ONLY Linux community I've seen display open hostility too users. Sure I've argued with folks on many topics an forums. However people in the Linux community over the years have in my experience strived to help each other out. Ubuntu is a huge exception to that.

Just to add insult to injury Ubuntu ONLY has live CDs. Me I have 6 machines. If I were to upgrade all 6 using a live CD with most ISPs today I'd max out my bandwidth cap doing it. What about the many times I go install on a machine without internet access? What if I want to air gap servers/machines? Or just simply don't want to wait the endless hours it takes to slowly transmit the same data over and over again on all the machines I have. I can from DVDs install, update and be done with it in a couple hours or so. All 6 machines if I've already backed them up. Configuring that takes weeks but I'm the exception there. With Ubuntu I could not physically download all that stuff over a cable modem connection in less than 8 hours and it'd more realistically take me days to do it. My bandwidth would be saturated and even browsing the web on a machine I already finished would be painfully slow as the others were installing. If you have 1 machine and that's it sure a live CD is fine. There are way too many other times you need a full install not a live CD and Ubuntu has zero interest in supporting install CDs. I started a nice long battle on the Ubuntu forums a bit back with exactly that issue. The clear answer was install CDs were not happening with Ubuntu.

Fedora has awesome driver support but it's "experimental" as such never "stable". Still it used too be a stable version despite the "experimental" tag. I ran FC3 on one machine for about 5 years w/o problems. FC5 I just replaced a couple years ago on another. Since then they've been end of lifing versions rather quickly and an install if your lucky will get you 2 or 3 years before they end of life it.

OpenSuse same problem with end of lifing. 10.2 is already end of lifed on support. They are barely on 11.x right now.

CentOS is great for a stable OS. It is a server based distro. So it is not especially geared for desktop users. You'll spend a great deal of time redoing the desktop work that comes default with most distros. You gain some really cool features though. So if your up for it and have the time CentOS or a Debian install will give you stability at the cost of limited repo access and having to roll up the sleeves and get dirty building packages and going through dependency hell. In a couple years you'll be essentially locked in various versions and give up on things like Flash and playing other non OSS formats.

5 years ago just about every Linux distro met your requirements. All the major distros came with solid GUI installers. They supported boht KDE and Gnome, the default varied with th distro but just about all of them let you choose during the install. Today I cannot think of a single one. Folks have suggested Mint which I'm going to give a look at. I looked at it a few months ago and there was something about it I didn't like but cannot remember what. Shrug worth a try. For me new installs are painful. I customize my machines pretty heavily and have tens of millions of files to organize and fit on a machine. Upgrades are intensely painful and the last upgrade that meant anything to me and added a feature I actually used was when they added USB to the Linux kernel several years ago. The ONLY reason I upgrade is for new drivers for new hardware I bought and because I cannot get security patches and other stuff for the version I'm using. Used to be I could get as much as 5 years out of an install. That's not happening today.

I am currently working on that. I have assembled some 10 repositories and made local copy of most of them (~20GB) and just last week made a "bundle" package that depends on some 30-40 essential packages selected from 2-3 repositories. I am even going to make a DVD with all of that installed, like "Centos Desktop" version.

It will not be only FOSS, but it will be feature rich, all graphics drivers, MP3, WMV, ... and flesh for Linux included. But only i386 version, there is to much missing for x86_64 for my taste.

List of mayor programs is posted in this thread. right now i need 5-10 commands to install ~ 500MB of updates and applications, and I haven't finished with my todo list yet.

My main problem is enough bandwidth to release it in the wild.

I know we're bounding off topic here, but....

They stop being supported 18 months after relase (which is after a further three releases).
LTS versions stop after three years, which is after a further two LTS releases.

The thinking is that these are time-scheduled and announced in advance, so they're reasonably easy to prepare for. The tools are available for what is almost invariably a trouble-free dist-upgrade.

Ooohhh. What hardware?
I've only had similar with one (5.04) that refuses to both upgrade and work on a thinkpad that shipped with Win95.
Also, I swear my 7.04 was still updating the other week (when I noticed it was about time I upgraded to something else).

Who upgrades by reinstalling?
Ubuntu support channels are peculiarly flooded with both new users, non-technical users, and people without much of an understanding of the kind of netiquette often expected in these channels. I've frequently run into things on the ubuntu-users list that sound like people assuming this is a pay-for service staffed by professionals. IRC's just impossible, I can't read quick enough to help people.
I'm not saying there isn't a problem, but I think it's deeper than just 'everyone on there is useless'.

I must admit that I've not run into this issue, being both pretty bad at upgrading, and pretty inconsistent in my distro of choice, but surely you could set one up as an apt-proxy, and dist-upgrade the others through that?

But this is also an issue I've not come across before. How much is missing from the LiveCD that needs pulling from the net? Is that all also missing from the alternate CD? This seems odd to me. I'm pretty sure all that's added to the DVDs are localisations, though, which did strike me as slightly odd.

Ubuntu is Debian Testing. Most people don't want truly stable OSs on their desktop.

Limited repo access?
I've been doing it for ten years and I still haven't given up on things like Flash and non OSS formats.
5 years ago flash under Linux was decidedly crap. It's still not really ideal.
Debian lets you install whatever WMs and DEs you like at install time, and you can do all the installation off the DVDs. Last time I was anywhere near Redhat the same was true there.