I installed 8.04 on a pc I gave to a friend, and had no issues with it, but on my home pc it was terrible.
My TV card driver kept hal from starting (there's a bug report on this)
My soundcard just worked whenever it wanted to, and eventually stopped working altogether. I've used this card since Suse 9.3 and never had an issue on any other release. There's also an unresolved bug report on this. Both pretty common pieces of hardware.
So this is where the problem lies for most people. Take a look at the ubuntu forum how many people are having trouble with pulseaudio.
The bullet proof x-server put me on the command line after installing the realtime kernel, and not even switching to the nv driver brought me back (this is a very long story)... anyway.
It really depends on your hardware. I have had a lot of bugs and problems with linux in my time, but 8.04 tops the list.

I've had similar problems with Ubuntu. It lags with some programs, the sound doesn't always work, and some programs like Totem and VLC won't always close.

I've learned a LOT to get as far as I have with Linux. I've learned some command line so I could work faster, I know how to compile programs and mount devices manually, etc. But now I just want to use my computer, and not spend so much time tinkering with it. I need something that just works.

After reading up on all of the suggested distros, I think OpenSuse will be my final choice. Hopefully some of the problems I had back when I tried version 9.3 have been worked out. If I can install multimedia codecs, tovid, wine, and vmware, and mount my ntfs and xfs partitions without too much pain, I'll be a happy camper.

Thanks again everyone for the recommendations.

I really - really appreciate it.

I liked Kubuntu 7.10 very much. When version 8.4 was released I downloaded it. I could not get it to install. It seems to be unable to handle USB drives. I switched to Debian. It installed easily.

I had formerly used openSUSE and liked it very much. However, I stopped using Suse when version 10.3 was released. It also was unable to handle a USB drive. I had used earlier versions of Suse on a desktop machine which had multiple hard drives. About the time the latest version of openSUSE came out the desktop machine died. I replaced it with a notebook. It does not have a big enough hard drive for two operating systems.

Debian has been the only Linux distribution which installs and operates from an external USB drive.

All I can say in my personal opinion is to try out Slackware. I have been using it for years (Longer than I have been registered on LQ). Believe me, I have tried multiple other operating systems (RedHat, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu, etc). But you know the saying... once you go slack, you never go back

DragonM15

You could try Sidux. Sidux is a live CD that has good hardware detection. It can be installed to the hard drive and run just like Debian "Sid"**. It's probably one of the fastest installing distributions I've tried. (Took me 15 min for a full install) There is also a lite version too (460mb), though I have not tried that one.

ftp://ftp-mirror.internap.com/pub/sidux/release


** Debian Sid is the Unstable branch, but it is really stable as long as you don't mindlessly install updates.

Let me know what you think of opensuse. I have tried and liked them all!: Ubuntu (current distro), debian, simplymepis, fedora core 2-4, knoppix, pclinuxos, mandrake 9 (I think), but not opensuse yet.

I should add that ubuntu 8.04 is working well for me. It seemed a little slow at one point, but picked up a little after switching from gnome to kde 4.1 (I think I got the version number right). KDE 4 looks very nice, and even nicer after user-configuration.

Am sure you checked this out, but ubuntu can be modded a lot better than many distros. The problem with debian is that it has something like two year backlogs with the releases of it.

Trying never hurts because trying is learning, just create backups of your settings, bookmarks, etc. Ease of installation goes for pretty much every binary Linux distro, I think. The huge repo: just exactly how many thousand packages do you need? If it's over 15000 or so then you may have to strike some distro's.

What you forgot to mention is what you use it for: server/ desktop/ something other/ something specialized. I use sidux atm. Based on Debian sid, using apt as package manager, light weight, KDE based, rolling release, easy if the mere mention of the CLI doesn't scare you and stable if you're willing to check warnings before a dist-upgrade.

I have tried almost all major linux distro , & u know what my advice to you is

JUST STICK TO UBUNTU , though I agree 8.4 LTS is somewhat unpolished & sometimes is slow , but it is shaping into NO 1 distro ( or as I believe )

So , don't go away & miss the fun , STICK TO UBUNTU

I was never that fond of Ubuntu, but then I'm a kde user and the Gnome Ubuntu always feels a better Gnome Ubuntu than the KDE Ubuntu (kubuntu) feels a KDE Ubuntu. But I see memory leaks in kubuntu that I don't see in, say, SuSE (and I didn't see in 6.06, 'till they broke it).

Normally, I would say that you should try OpenSuSE, but right now that comes with a warning. 11.0 is about to be released (in a couple of weeks or so??). I think 11.0 is likely to be an adventurous release and it may not be fully succesful, so maybe I'll wait till 11.1. OTOH, it might be close enough that I want to install 11.0 and keep it patched.

But, right now, anything with KDE 4 is likely to need a heavy update in a month or two. If that (& the net bandwidth issue that it implies) doesn't put you off, give it a go. (I think SuSE 11.0 will still give you the option of KDE 3.5.x (and kde 4.x), where Fedora pushes 4.x as the one true solution. Don't get me wrong, if I'm not using a kde 4.something in six months time, I'll be very pissed off, its just that I'm not sure that we are there, yet.)

PC-Los, Xandros would also be clear candidates for me. Tried Mint and, in live cd form it was slow (but I should have tried a real install, to be fair). RH/Fedora is much improved, these days, and while I went off RH ages ago, these days it is probably worth another go.

I have to say, I am impressed by the whole synaptic/debian package management system and that alone would push me towards a debian-derived distro (but SuSE 11.0 is supposed to have dramatically improved its package management - to be honest, I'll believe that SuSE have taken a massive step towards a better package management system and that a later 11.x is really going to get it right until I see it - big changes don't tend to happen in one big step over at SuSE).

I don't know how much experience you have (I have about a year of Ubuntu and a couple months of Slackware), but if you're still learning I'd suggest Slackware. I've learned ten times more about Linux than when I was using Ubuntu, which is one reason I switched to it.

If you like Gnome, Parsix linux does a nice job.

Live cd, nice installer, and Debian based.

I've been using Ubuntu 8.04 for about a month now and don't like it. I'mnoticing that the Orca screen reader seems very unstable with it, and there's several bugs. I'm seriously thinking about switching to slackware. I'm completely new to Linux, but I have a friend who could help me get it up and running. My biggest concern with it is whether or not Orca works with the KDE desk top. Does anyone know if it does, or if not, what other screen readers asside from Speak up do?

Interesting. I've experienced the exact opposite. I've now used ubuntu 8.04 for one month and I love it! I tried a couple of years ago using ubuntu. I didn't think much about it. I've tried pclinuxos, mandriva, debian, slackware, sidux. There all okay, but right now I'll stick with ubuntu. It has helped me kick my Windows habit! It's the first time ever to be free of Windows for this long. So you can see how I feel about ubuntu. No complaints whatsoever. When problems came up (very little), I found an easy solution.

I haven't tried ubuntu. I use slackware. Nevertheless, I feel pretty confident in saying that the distribution is not necessarily the problem. Things got a lot more complicated for linux users when cpus turned dual core and video became a necessity. The default installation kernel ran slower on a 1.86GHz dual core, than on a 600MHz single core. I had to compile a custom kernel with smp. Then the computer was fast, but video barely worked. I installed the video driver that the video card maker recommended. Finally, the computer behaved as it should.