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Linspire 5.0 blows hard, many of the pre-included software doesn't work, including CNR, the torrenting program, and the video player. and I want something else.

Ubuntu and openSUSE are supposed to be good, but I'm looking at Freespire, because it has the proprietary drivers that originally drew me to Linspire, but obviously those can be downloaded separately. (Flash player can be downloaded separately, can't it?)

Destructionator XIII wrote: I personally use Slackware, but it has critics who are not necessarily without merit. I love it and standby it, but I also accept it is not for everyone. It is very command line centric and you often have to do stuff yourself.

Also, I use it. That fact alone should make Slackware's superiority obvious to all.

I'd recommend Gentoo, simply because Portage makes package management easier. The downside is that you'll have to compile everything, but programs run a bit better than if one used stock binaries, usually.

I use and heartilly reccomend Ubuntu, especially if you're new. Once you've got a decent set of repositories set up it pretty much takes care of itself. Also, the forums are excellent and will get you up to speed quite quickly.

I finally decided myself to buy Suse10.0 and install it on my VAIO A317M and here are my thought after six months

Plus:
- Most things on my laptop worked Out of the Box post-install (a bit tricky for Wlan but a matter of half an hour after looking on the web)
- Very user friendly (YAST2 when it works is a bliss)
- Shitload of software for pretting much everything included on the CD
- XGL is T3h c00l!!1!(if you GPU is compatible)

Con:
- some Repository seems to be badly maintained (especially if you are running on x86_64 platform, i would say avoid SuSE if you plan to use it on an Athlon 64)
- ATI Drivers sucks donkey ball (but that's more an ATI fault than SuSE)
- No video codec installed for copyright reason, i had to install Mplayer and still kaffeine and others player don't want to play video (but Mplayer plays everything so it's not that much of a problem)

But of course SuSE is not considered as a real multimedia distro, it's more like Xandros: for SMBs

Anyway, you could check this quizz to see what distro would suit you

I've found Mandriva One relatively easy to use, and it has a sizable rpm base for installing packages, so as long as you've got a working internet connection adding new software should be a snap for it. Its live installation feature means you won't have to spend time scratching your head trying to figure out how to format your hard drive, either. So, if you want something relatively easy, I'd consider giving it a whirl.

I used Linux From Scratch for awhile, then migrated to Debian and Ubuntu- one only has so much time to do admin, and Ubuntu has less maintenance.

I started with Mandriva (their 2005 Special Edition, to be exact) and then moved on to SUSE 10. Both were very good KDE platforms, though Mandriva didn't have as much as SUSE, though SUSE felt somewhat bloated. I now use Ubuntu 6.06, having started on 5.10. I believe the rapid growing popularity, public board and likes of Synaptic and being a Debian based system, make it the superior platform for beginners especially. It helps that Canonical, Ltd. is also very well backed and will remain entirely dedicated to GNU.