Thanks all for the great replies! I decided to stick with mandrake for a little longer just because I want to get used to linux more b4 I try other dispos. Anyway I see that most ppl that use KDE, use almost all the same programs I do so I guess I'm on the right track for what I want to do. Thanks again!

Here's a list of all the OS/graphical environments I've used and my experience with them, in chronological order:
* Mandrake 9.1 + KDE: system admin tools were nice; KDE was a little on the bloated side feature-wise
* Mandrake 9.1 + Gnome: didn't stay with it long enough to evaluate it
* Gentoo + fluxbox: wouldn't recommend it; I couldn't get hardware 3d acceleration working in gentoo at all, nor did I get my wheel mouse to work; fluxbox is ok if your going for something minimalistic
* FreeBSD + fluxbox: wouldn't recommend it; X wouldn't work half the time for some unapparent reason
* Gentoo + fluxbox + rox: slightly better than plain fluxbox, but not by much
* Gentoo + xfce4 + rox: much better feature-wise compared to fluxbox, but it was still lacking a fair bit
* Slackware + Dropline Gnome 2.6: very nice; I got everything working rather quickly; Dropline Gnome comes with an abundance of very handy applications; setting up slackware was rather noob-unfriendly, although not as bad as gentoo's was

"FreeBSD + fluxbox: wouldn't recommend it; X wouldn't work half the time for some unapparent reason"

bytecoder: PEBCAC

debian -testing and gnome.

kicks ass.

Slackware. It's bleeding fast and the most "UNIX like" of all the Linux's, many *BSD buffs respect it, which is a big thing coming from them.

I use Slackware on two 5400 rpm HDD's (20 gigs each) using kernel 2.4.26 and the Reiser filesystem, and it's still quite a bit faster than XP.

You'll crap your pants at the speed compared to Red Hat or Mandrake.

It's not necessarily the easiest distro to set up, but once it's set up, you don't have to constantly hack away at it - since Slackware uses the KISS moto - Keep It Simple Stupid.

All of the setup and configuring is very straight forward though, and #slackware on the Freenode IRC network is very helpful, let me tell you.

Have fun, if you do so choose Slackware.

Hell, have fun either way. [smile]

Quote: Original post by NicoDeLuciferi
I use slackware for both my computers..
I've tried a few other distros, but IMHO slack is the greatest..

The same here. I'm running slackware 10 with KDE. Never a problem. My wife's machine running WinMe, and my dad's running win2000 (which could be considered average users) needs reinstall after 4-6 months of browsing the intarweb.

Quote: Original post by White Rabbit
"FreeBSD + fluxbox: wouldn't recommend it; X wouldn't work half the time for some unapparent reason"

bytecoder: PEBCAC

Agree... I run FreeBSD 5.2.1 with fluxbox + rox with x.org on a Celeron 500mhz without ever having a hitch<knock on wood> with really even having to change any config files. Just compiling everything out of the ports, and did that take awhile, poor machine. lol. Although I do feel odd running FreeBSD as a desktop system compared to all the linux users.

I've also ran KDE/Gnome, Windowmake, and few others without ever having problems as well.

(sorry to go off-topc on *bsd)