Hey guys, I am planning to change distros, I am using Sabayon and even if it's great, I'm having a bit of difficulty with it (I'm a linux n00b) and since it's not that well known and stuff and doesn't have as much support it's hard to find answers...

I don't know what distro to switch to though, I want a distro that's equally good and has eyecandy since I love eye candy (and I like KDE just in case) But a distro that'd be a bit better for a noob (and can handle an ipod xD)...don't wanna use kubuntu though, there's a desktop running kubuntu where I live and I don't like it as much...

So any ideas guys?

Oh and if I switch...will I lose my stuff? Programs and everything???

Thanks in advance

All distributions support KDE.

Here is a quick comparison of the top 10 distros: http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

"Best KDE distro" is a frequent topic of Linux blogs and magazines, if you do a quick Google search you'll find some.

You will only lose your documents/files if you forget to back them up to an external drive before formatting your drive and installing the new distro.

Mepis, pclinuxos or opensuse

I think you would be well served by checking out the new Mandriva fork Mageia (http://www.mageia.org/en/).

You will lose your programs. If your a new to Linux and love eye candy. Try Linux Mint, they just released a KDE version. http://linuxmint.com/ .

Check out the screen shots, download it to a DVD or USB, test drive without installing, enjoy

You love eye candy. So there is an eye candy for you and all those who like eye candy i.e., Linux Mint I'm talking about.

Here is the link for downloading the eye candy:
http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

And here is the link you can check for it's reviews:
http://desktoplinuxreviews.com/2011/...linux-mint-12/
http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2011/12/08...int-12-review/

Give it a try and I'm sure you'll love this eye candy.

If you dont like Kubuntu chances are you wont like linuxMint since Mint is Ubuntu base, So I would suggest you try the liveCD of OpenSuse and play with it.
Here is the link http://software.opensuse.org/121/en

Good luck to you.

I was considering it....I'm just afraid of their contract with Microsoft XD

I understand NOVELL is a business and they are looking to make money or layoff their workers. But keep in mind OpenSuSE is a Linux Distro well supported by a its community and you will always find help in their forums.
So try theis liveCD and see what you think.

Unless your using Suse Linux Entreprise Desktop then you have nothing to worry about. The most popular Linux distros are commercially backed; Fedora (Red Hat), Ubuntu(Canonical Ltd), Open Suse (Novell).

I use Gentoo which is an entirely community driven project, and I believe Debian is also community supported.

OpenSUSE is one of the best KDE centered distributions you can find. Prepare for a lot of green, though. :^)
As for the contract between Novell and Microsoft, I never thought it was a good idea, but the whole thing is still under the GPL, so they aren't going to start charging a monthly fee or offer OpenSUSE Gold Edition. It's still safe territory. I checked out Mageia a bit, but it wasn't quite mature enough, although it has potential.

It's probably a silly question, but have you tried posting you problems both here and on the Sabayon site?

You will obviously lose any programs you've installed. Whether you lose anything else depends on whether you created a /home partition. If you didn't, you'll need to backup all your personal files and make /home next time.

The best beginners' distros for KDE are probably Mepis and OpenSuse. Mepis has the media codecs installed, Suse makes you download them. I've never tried the KDE version of Mint, but the other Mints are good, so I'd expect the KDE one to be fine.

What about mandriva? Is it good?

Yes is good the only thing is that there is a rummor going around that the poeple behing Mandriva are canceling the project so nobody knows what is going to happens with the actual Mandriva. At the moment Magia is what came out of the latest Mandriva.

I still recommended mepis PC linuxos and opensuse. mepis and PC linuxos are both kde centered and include nonfree software such as multimedia codecs and drivers. opensuse does a good implementation of kde too and there multimedia codecs and stuff are made very easy to install; jarva tends to be slightly harder though.