I have been recently very annoyed with other distros. I can get everything working on one computer, but on another, X just will not work! It's so inconsistent. I am talking about FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Debian.

I wasted so much time going through several distros just to try to get X working on a Smasung laptop and Dell desktop. Heck i even tried Gentoo but gave up because the kernel compilation was taking ages.

Slackware works fine on all my computers but I got one problem with it. It doesn't support Gnome natively any more (i know there is Dropline) and it is hell trying to install Gnucash on it, and the package management is just sometimes too much work.

I just want a distro that will work! Something that i can configure X, and then confidently type startx and know that it will turn on (like slackware) and not spit out errors, while also having the easy package management like debian.

Can anyone give their thoughts on this?
How do updates work? Do you have to be a member of Mandrakeclub to use it? And where do you get other packages?

The killer apps that i need to work for linux are:
Evolution, Gnucash, Dailystrips (downloads comic strips) and Liferea or some other RSS reader

So, its Patrick's decision, if you don't like it, make your own distro and only use Gnome too much work?? what is so hard about::
installpkg, updatepkg, removepkg, and pkgtool...............easy.......

All these garbage progs like .........apt-get , swaret, emerge and other crap just make people $LAZY...........

other packages: you use urpmi in mandrake: http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/
try mandrake, you wont go back
everything works great out of the box

its VERY easy and does NOT make us LAZY, it makes the work more EFFICIENT