New distro picker at Tux Radar
 

The folks at Tux Radar have created a distro picker for those trying to decide which distro to use:

http://tuxradar.com/content/distro-picker-0

My results:

1) Slackware
2) Gentoo
3) Arch

...and so on.

Spot on!

Thanks for the alert!

It picked Arch for me, but that's probably because I chose pacman as the package tool. I might play around with this tool a bit more later to see how it compares with other distro pickers.

Yeah, I would imagine Pacman would lean the results toward Arch, just as Portage would to Gentoo, etc. I chose "Don't care" for package management, which I suppose would skew the results toward Slackware.

Yeah, my guess would be that most new Linux users looking for their first distro would have no idea what package manager they would want, so maybe they should create a "package manager chooser" as well. :)

That's a good point, that I hadn't considered. A complete newbie coming from Windows or Mac OSX might rightly say "What the hell is a package manager?" I was just explaining to a Mac user the other day the concept of package management/system updates in Linux vs. Windows and OSX, and how when you update software in Linux, everything is updated, not just OS-specific software, as is the case with Windows and OSX. They thought that was pretty cool, and made a lot of sense.

It seems to rate packaging very highly, compared to GUI and stability. I selected rpm + Xfce/Mate + stable. Of the distros I use, it suggested CentOS (which doesn't actually have Xfce or Mate) but not Salix: rpm obviously clinched it.

The choice of things to include is odd: the lovely Mepis is out but the rubbishy aLinux is in.

Meh. I specifically put in my answers geared toward trying to get a single answer (siduction), and it still doesn't give the answer I purposely weighted everything for. Not all that impressive. If I were honest I'd probably get something horrible like Fedora suggested (no offense to Fedora fans, but I despise the OS).

I hear that. I downloaded the Fedora 18 Xfce version over the weekend for the hell of it. It had been years since I had tried it, previously. Didn't make it past the live session, buggy GUI stuff in Xfce. Yup, just like I remember it! And don't get me started on systemd, pulseaudio, and other LP junk.

I got:
Sabayon
Chakra
Debian
Slackel
So now I'm having more of a play with Sabayon in a VM and will look at Chakra and Slackel. That said I can't see me changing from Debian any time soon unless it's to Slackware.

It's slightly simplistic. I've seen distro choosers that based their results on a greater number of factors making them more reliable.

Absolutely. This one is more complete:

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

That's it. I got 100% Slackware and Gentoo. In the one that the OP points to I got Arch and Debian at the top:)

Interesting, it gave me SalixOS at 99% match. Which doesn't really differ from Slackware (running it currently)
Followed by Slackel, Porteus, and Arch.

Seems pretty accurate.

they need to update there database
#3 for me was Fuduntu

before they closed shop i was thinking of giving it a go on a usb

i stated KDE
because Gnome3 is unusable

Cent6 is using gnome2

missing a bit there
choosing Gnome2 or Gnome3

Not only is it ridiculously simplistic, using only six criteria, but two of them (1/3 of the questions!) are about DEs and package managers. How the hell are people ignorant of Linux supposed to rate GUIs and package managers they know nothing about? It strikes me as more of a toy for existing Linux users than a tool for the uninitiated to pick a distro.

I just noticed something similar. I stated XFCE and nothing else but it turns out Sabayon is KDE.

If you look closer sabayon does have multiple "remixes" with different desktops available for download:
http://www.sabayon.org/release/press...e-sabayon-1304
http://www.sabayon.org/gallery/sabayon-linux-xfce

Although KDE seems to be the recommended option.

I did miss those -- I think the download page I found only had the KDE release.
As it is I installed XFCE on Sabayon and it looks OK but the package management seems very long-winded which I take it is because it's built upon Gentoo with additions.

The GUI package manager in Sabayon, Rigo, is relatively new, and yes, I find it a bit long-winded. Portage from the command line in Gentoo is pretty simple and powerful. But then, the same could be said about using Synaptic Package Manager vs. apt-get in Debian-based distros. I prefer to install/remove packages from the command line, myself.

I was actually using Entropy (well, the equo command) as given in the fresh install instructions on the Sabayon site. It did the job but seemed to take a lot longer than the relevant apt-get or yum command needing equo libtest and equo deptest running after any update or install.
There was a GUI tool that told me which packages needed updating but didn't seem to give any obvious way of updating them -- again in contrast to most other distributions I have used.
I dare say that once you're familiar with it or if you use portage instead things seem a little less long-winded. The many ways to get the job done probably allow for a more flexible approach too but first impressions are of a lot of complexity.

Yeah, in my experience, apt-get and pacman seems to be the fastest.