Hey everyone.. I need a little guidance, or at least a few suggestions.

I've tried many different distros now. I haven't stuck with one exclusively because I've been burning so many CDs and trying so many different ones, just to see what I like and dont like. I've found a few distros that have good points, but they always have something negative about them as well. I'll list the ones I've tried, what I like and dislike about them, and see if anyone can help me out.

Mandrake - Didnt like this enough to keep it on my system for more than a day. It's slow and RPM dependencies are a pain in the ass.

SuSe - This one was ok.. but it seemed like the free version didn't have that much to offer. YAST is very nice though. All in all it was ok, but I dont think it would be my first choice.

Fedora - I like Fedora a lot.. I like the package management and I like the selection the installation comes with. The problem is, Fedora is very slow compared to a lot of the other distros I've used. This is the real thing that's turning me off to it right now.

Gentoo - Couldn't even get through the installation. Many different problems on many failed attempts. I know a little bit about Linux but apparently not enough to get through this. Probably not going to try again.

Slackware - I liked Slackware, but I had a few hardware problems with it. I'm seriously considering this one.. the main reason I got rid of Slack was because no matter what, I couldnt get 3d acceleration on my Radeon 9700 Pro (Nforce2 motherboard).. seems no distros like that combo, as I learned later.

Libranet - Probably my favorite distro so far. It's fast, and it's debian based so it comes with apt-get. It has a very nice feature called the adminmenu. My problem with Libranet was that the packages are very outdated, and apt-get was having some trouble upgrading many of the packages I wanted. If they release a new version soon, I will probably run this for sure.



Any suggestions, reasoning for choosing a specific distro, or any other comments you have are welcome. I'd really like Linux to replace Windows for me (For everything but gaming, I guess, since it doesnt like my vid card). I just haven't been able to find a distro that I'm 100% happy with. I always seem to be going back to Windows for things.

If you like Libranet, then why not try Debian Sarge? I like it and it is current.
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

Ubuntu is Debian based and is going to be on a quicker update cycle than Debian stable.
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

slackware .....

1. you will learn a lot because lot of config you need to by your self.

2. the support from LQ slackers is superb...

The most importang thing you need to know when installing gentoo is kernel configuration and fstab. If you learn those in another distribution first, then switching to gentoo isn't that hard. One thing I would recommend is taking the slackware 2.6 kernel default config and using that in Gentoo. Only thing you propably need to change is devfs stuff in pseudo filesystems (the instalation manual has more about that). Oh, and try a stage 3 install, much faster and I seriously doubt any gentoo user can "feel" the stage1-3 difference Btw, do you remember any of the problems you had with gentoo? Why not tell them, there are many Gentoo users on this board who could try to help.

If you don't want to try Gentoo again, I would recommend Debian. It's very good. The next stable version should be released soon (Sarge). The only problem with it is that the packages won't change version numbers, but I quess there is going to be a backports site for Sarge too.

I might try debian sarge.. I was considering it. I looked at Ubuntu as well, but it seems they only package Gnome with it. I'm a big fan of KDE. If I could get KDE up and running well on Ubuntu then I would definately try that.

Just make sure that if you go after any version of Debian you're ready for some hardcare installing action. I know several people who have had their heads explode the debian installer was so horrible to use.

Make sure you hit the guides, hard, before you do any installing.

If you are looking for a good fast distro from the start I would try Yoper or Arch. Yoper is cool because it has the ability to use debian based apt, slackware installpkg and removepkg, YaST, SAX2 and other great things from other distros. Also it comes with KDE only. Also the Yoper installer is super easy. Arch is a bit more like slackware in that you need to do some editing of config files to get everything up and going, but the Arch package manager called Pacman is very very nice.

I use both of these distros and like them both.

I have installed sytems numerous times using Potato, Woody, and Sarge installers. It wasn't hard. All you have to do is be patient and read what is on the screen. I find that people think it is hard because they get click happy and don't read or follow instructions.

This is true.