I second the recommendation to go with Ubuntu or openSUSE. I started with Kubuntu and then switched to Ubuntu as I got a better appreciation of the benefits of staying as mainstream as possible. There is plenty to learn with a mainstream distro, I'd suggest starting with one and switching to Slackware etc. later on if you feel you're not learning enough.

You might want to think about creating a separate /home partition to make it easier to switch distros without losing your data.

The only reservation I have about OpenSUSE is the fact that I hear Novell is forming an alliance with microsoft..

Just one other thing. I have been looking at the latest reviews on distrowatch. None of mention compatibility with x86 architecture, especially Ubuntu or OpenSUSE.

Does that mean i am not supported for these operating systems?

Most, if not all distros support x86, Ubuntu and OpenSuSE support x86 for sure, considering I have ran Ubuntu on x86, and I have seen openSuSE run on x86

One of my computers is a P3 500mhz with 512mb ram and 40gb hard drive. We've been running SuSE 10.0 on it for quite some time. Works great. A little slow to boot up, and some things take a bit to load, but is very useable. It doesn't have any odd hardware on it, so SuSE installed with no problems (if I remember correctly). Mostly used for web surfing and games now, up until a few months ago, that was the only computer in the house, and we did everything on it. We still use it enough that it was worth while to me to get a new power supply for it about a week ago.

I have found Opensuse to be very nice for laptops. It did all of the wireless networking and cpu scaling pretty much out of the box, as long as the hardware is supported and doesn't need any extra firmware extracted.

siawash - your thread has been merged into the purpose built, hand crafted megathread for "which distro" questions.

All the replies so far has been really fantastic. Many thanks to all.

I have done quite a bit of reading and using all the innovative distro chooser tools.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the "latest greatest" might slow down my seven year old P III Dell latitude. I read in one review how Mandriva's latest had slowed down a dual core system. On Linspire's official website it mentions system hardware requirements of at least a GHz processor.

My sys is P III 650 Mhz with 512 mb ram and 60 gig hdd. It's quite fast with win2k as long as i stay away from bitTorrent and avoid spy ware and stuff.

I have managed to make a short list of distro to try out first.

Ubuntu
Mandriva
PCLinux
OpenSUSE ( despite the MS deal )
Slackware

I read XBUNTU is for older machines so I might try that too. But none of the official websites mention hardware minimum requirements, except for Linspire. The live cd wont give any feel for performance either.

Ubuntu runs sluggish on my Pentium 3, Slackware runs as fast as hell on my machine, but beware of the slight learning curve

Yes, it increasingly looks my options are XBUNTU, OpenSUSE and slackware.
If only they could pick up my USB devices I would be laughing.. devices such my mobile phones usb, ipod, external hdd etc.


The live CD should detect these, right?

Yes, it increasingly looks my options are XBUNTU, OpenSUSE and slackware.
If only they could pick up my USB devices I would be laughing.. devices such as my mobile phones usb, ipod, external hdd etc. I also would like support for multimedia codec.

At the end of the day its going to have to be a happy medium between good level of support to get me started and thin client. The support for slackware does not seem as good as XBUNTU. Although I would like to challenge myself later with slackware as I get more comfortable with linux.


The live CD should help determine wether its going detect my usb devices, right?

I'm under heavy conditions. I want Linux, have no money and want a distro as relevant as possible to this:
Lotsa packages for distro
Can compile tarballs out of the box
Uses the latest alpha KDE version
NOT ASSOCIATED with Ubuntu or any deriatives (yea, that means no Mint)
Is fully customizable, but with no tradeoff with how easy installation is (in essence, no Gentoo.)
Not obsessed with wanting such-and-suck (no that was not a typo)a language to be compatible mainly (No ubuntu, again)
Is good for the experienced Linux user, but still very user-friendly.
The latest stable software is automatically watched over and upgraded when needed
Is good for the bored-as-heck Linux operator.

Okay, no telling me to go to that crappy linux distro chooser you all think is so friggin awesome...

Thanks in advance.

Wow. I was really going to go an suggest Ubuntu. Slackware? Fedora? Mandriva? What have you tried already and why did you not want them?

And what's wrong with the distro chooser?

Anyway, this is now part of the megathread where you will soon get a stack of opinions based on your options.

Xavier's on the ball. By the time I reported the thread, it had already moved here.

Mandriva or Suse has incorporated some of the latest KDE version into their latest distro, but if you want KDE 4, you will have to build it yourself. If Suse is your final decision, I believe KDE 4 has prms for Suse.