Have spent some time now testing distro's, trying to find suitable distro's for some 'puters.
Found TinySofa for my server, KnoppMyth for entertainment-box - but for home & office? I need to replace Mandrake which was good up to 9.1...
Vector is good and fast - but lousy hardware-support. I gave up, too much that didn't work although it should, no answers found.
Tried some Debian-variants: very good software-installation from Internet repos! But then the hardware...
Can't use my serial Sportster modem, no sound, no USB-drives, no firewire... And can't su to root in terminal and start apps.... Yes it can all be fixed - I just have a feeling I'll spend most of my time configuring and fixing...
Fedors C3 or LormaLinux: Very good hardware-support! Every piece of hardware just works!
But then, yum or apt-4-rpm...
problems, problems, dependencies, dependencies...

I have to get productive soon, time is running out
can't spend more time testing/fixing, I think I'm gonna shout!
Need something that works, let's me do my DTP, video-editing etc etc... Combination of Debian-softwarehandling and Fedora-hardwarehandling...

Don't know what to do, so I do:
a little in this distro here
a little in that distro there
in the end it has gotten me nowhere...
(Maybe I should forget about computing and go for poetry? )

Try the "Novell Desktop Linux" which is different than SusE

Hey, I'm thinking about getting a guitar (been thinking about that for a while actually ). But about the distro question, I would recommend SuSE for ease of use and Gentoo if you want to get your hands dirty and have time to compile everything from the very first start.

But better yet, is to check if your hardware is supported. If it's not, it's not even worthy the hassle jumping from one distro to another. Most of the distributions (if not all) has a HCL on their page, take a look into it first

Regards!

P.S: for yet another Debian variant, check Ubuntu or Libranet.

buying SuSE *might* be the best choise indeed.

Well, seeing as how how you're obviously a noob, maybe you should try Mepis ....

O.K., enough of the jokes.
Seriously, Mepis has good support for a Deb distro - not quite as stupid as most about licensing, and what to include/exclude.
I put it on one of my boxes, and it found everything - PCI wifi card, CUPS worked for the printer on my (hardware) router.
Pretty impressive - is still on that box for the missus.

For me, Gentoo - you get out what you put in ...

SuSe...
Maybe I should have mentioned it... I have several, all weird. Bought one, also bought 8.2 upgrade for my brother. SuSe is Windows on Linux... no thanks!
But musicman_ace you say Novell desktop is different? Maybe I should give it a try.
("musicman", heh? With Megaman X we're three! This thread sure attracts world-famous artists! Or soon to be )

Yes, Gentoo.
I meant to try it, several have recommended it. I just don't have the time unfortunately, have spent several months testing 50+ distro's so I have no time left for what might be the very best... I should have started with that one, really.

And as for hardware-support, all my hardware is supported by Linux/Fedora-branch. Maybe not Debian-kinds? I don't think that's the problem, with Debian you're supposed to do everything yourself.

Have tried Debian 2.2, Sarge, LibraNet 1.8 & 2.8, Ubuntu 2 variants, Mepis, Yoper, VL, Cobind, WhiteBox, OneBase, SuSe 7, 8 & 9, BLAG, Lorma.......

Have to decide now which way to go: Configure hardware or software?

I deliberately omitted Suse- I've had a bitch of a time with a 9.2 DVD. Wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy.

Tried Slack for the first time on my work laptop within the last couple of weeks.
Looks pretty impressive.

Arch will pwn all.

Nah seriously, I don't have any fancy hardware but it all worked out of the box with the Arch kernel, it actually performed very well for a stock distro kernel, I've compiled one with some speed patchsets and I don't notice much of a difference at all, good kernel. And it's package manager is... wait for it.... better than Debian!* Give it a shot at any rate, it's not for a newbie but it's not very hard if you read the docs first.

* = my opinion

Can you explain what you mean by dependency problems when using yum or apt. their job is to automatically resolve dependencies. Maybe you were not very proficient with using them.

syg00 I was busy writing when you posted, missed it.
Yes, Mepis might be my way. I know it's aimed at noob's - "point-and-click-Linux".
I don't really care. I need a distro that let's me do my work, I want something that let's me configure using commandline when I want to or use GUI-tools when I prefer that.
If I know what to do commandline is fastest, if I have time to learn reading config-files is a good way. But when I don't know & don't have time I use GUI-tools. (SuSe and Mandrake want's to force me to use GUI, manually editing files screws things up.)
And when I need to install a fresh distro, I want it up-and-running fast. I want it to just work. This is especially important at two occasions: 1) The kids are standing beside me eager to do some serious computing. 2) I have a weekend all by myself, I just bought a new game & a bottle of whisky....

But I think the best is to solve hw-problems, after all I do that once for each piece of hardware.
With all software-dependency problems, missing repos etc - I can't really fix it, just try to find repos. And I install software much more often than hardware.
Actually, in Mepis I managed to get sound and modem working. A few more evenings and maybe I can connect my USB-drive and firewire-camera...
Sigh...
Or spend those evenings with Gentoo? See there, here we go again, more testing to do...

Why did the almighty Lord give us so little time but so many distro's?

Yes, Arch!
Arch and dRock was two distro's that sounded promising, unfortunately the CD-images were corrupted so I couldn't try them.
Maybe I'll try again? ... could someone please email me some more time? I'm sure there's an opensource-app out there which converts minutes to kilobits! Then gzip minutes -> seconds and mail me...

To everyone bashing on Suse, I totally agree with you. I was a SusE fanatic until Novell completely trashed the distro with 9.2, but seriously the Novell Linux Desktop is really nice, fast, stable, and has many applications that can replace a windows desktop. It should seriously be considered.

Interesting - I've never managed to get a good copy of Arch either. Eventually lost interest in it.
Nah - you'd only waste it, screwing around with yet another distro ...