The perfect Distro to start out with?
 

Today i have been reviewing distros and am looking for stability and speed, also beginner friendly. I've used Ubuntu, Fedora, and Linux mint, but would like something better.

So far i'm thinking about these ones...
Slackware
Gentoo
arch

Anybody of any other choices?

Slackware, Gentoo and Arch aren't really beginner friendly, but they are very fast and generally really stable

Slackware's plenty user friendly! I speak as someone who's first distro was Slackware!

And, any of the above will give you a in depth understanding of how Linux is put together if you go with them.

One thing i have a problem with Slackware is the installation/partioning part.

Been reading some docs and it looks pretty tough lol

Anyway thanks for your suggestions

Any really good step by step guides installing Slackware 12.1?

What do you find difficult about partitioning/installing Slackware? cfdisk is easier to use (IMO) than fdisk for partitioning.

What is not in Fedora Ubuntu and LInux mint , what it should have according to you ?
If we know it maybe it is possible to give you it better advice.
Each distro has it pros and contra.

all the best

Although Arch is awesome and reliable, it is not known as a beginners distro. But, if you're also looking at gentoo, why not give it a try. Just make sure you have documentation (i.e. the arch wiki pages on www.archlinux.org) handy.

Slack is cool too, really enjoyed it when I used it.

I have no usage-based opinion on gentoo, but you have to be aware that it is source based, so even if you run into no real problems it might take longer to install since you have to compile it all (at least, that is my understanding). It does have a good community though, so if you ask intelligent questions, you will get intelligent answers.

I think he's looking for something a little more "pure" then Fedora and Ubuntu are (no apt-get's or yum install, something that works across the board), and less bloated. I love Fedora, but, my Gentoo install on my P4 runs circles around Fedora on my Core 2 Duo. (1.7GHz P4 w/ 512MB ECC RDRAM (PC-800) vs 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo w/ 2GB DDR2 (PC2 5300))

I have to admit I cannot understand this question posted with a "The perfect Distro to start out with?" title.

You have tried distributions people would often recommend as a good place to start and ignored others in your "thinking about" list. Why can't you just try before you buy at this point?

I've seen this question to many times....
The perfect distro to do what ?
Stability.....many linux distro are stable (Ubuntu, Fedora,Debian , Slackware, Gentoo, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, Opensuse and many others) ..so many of them..
Speed...well if you want speed..you'll have to buy a new PC. I've tested Debian 3.1, 4.0, Fedora Core 3,4,5,6,7,8,9, Mandriva, Opensuse, Ubuntu,Kubuntu on basicly the same PC (1,7 GHz AMD Sempron 512 RAM) and ..well speed depends on : how many applications are installed and running in background, how many processes are sleeping, how many services are running, what kernel version you have installed, what kind of HDD are you using, motherboard specs...etc

Beginner friendly....what does this mean?
ALL Linux distributions have graphical interfaces to package managers ..this helps
ALL Linux distributions have desktop managers or windows managers..this sure is beginner friendly.
There are a lot of books written for many distributions...long live the internet
The most important Linux distros have graphical installer wizard..., have a lot of prepackaged applications for graphics, music, video,internet,programming ...all good things
It's free..Isn't that USER FRIENDLY?