My favorite is Frugalware.
It's simple but easy, has very nice build-files + package system, and up2date packages and seems stable in the -current branch.
My favorite is Archlinux.
First I tried out Suse when I didnt know a thing about Linux/Unix...but after using Archlinux I learned so much more 
I've used Red Hat (enterprise and fedora), played around with slackware and gentoo, and had LFS for the kicks of it.. But for a (home!)desktop enviroment I like Ubuntu best..out of the box evertyhing works, package management is brilliant in my opinion, and most importantly: even my wife can install it and work with it on her laptop (with out me spending hours fixing Wifi or some other "trivial feature").
Yes, the "bare ones" are really fun, light and very usefull to learn about linux.. but im at a stage that i just want a desktop to watch a movie browse some sites etc.. (i get to do all the geeky stuff at work anyway..)
One thing i often stumble upon though is that some of these easy-to-use-distribution-xy are not even able to boot from LiveCD without turning acpi and apic and pci-acpi manually off! 
This is really a showstopper, as other distros boot just fine. I also dont like this 6-month-thing anymore. It really is boring to some aspect too. But mainly... an example: my brother wanted to really try and use Linux and did so. I helped him installing and configuring some things. But he often asked 'how to get this new version of wine, or libgpod, .. ' you know. Telling him 'you can, just compile yourself and make a package' is just... not right. After 2 weeks he gave up and installed Windows again. :rolleyes:
I use Kubuntu (not Ubuntu ... I voted other)
I have tried RH ... Mandrake/Mandriva ... Linspire .... SuSE and many other distros that no longer exist (used Lycoris for a couple of years)...
I prefer KDE simply because it makes Linux more intuitive to an Old Windows user (I started on PC's on a Coleco Adam ... does that give you an idea of how old 
)
I was an RPM biggit till I tried Kubuntu and now I prefer not to switch back
I have been using Linux for over 10 years and have seen a lot of growth but I think I am done switching to the Linux flavor of the day.
Definitely Slackware...
I assume CentOS would count as linux/fedora then?
I voted for SuSe coz I am using it now.
i use Redhat (6.2, 7.*, 9, as4). for Oracle db.
Debian Linux (woody, sarge, etch - slink if you count Corel linux)
I'm using PCLOS and am pretty happy with it. Got tired of WinXPSP1 that MS refused to update for me, figured it was time for Linux.. Tried several live cds and PCLinux works best for me so far.
lp
I'm using CentOS. Since it's "RHEL equivalent", would this count as RHEL?
I used RedHat and Fedora before. But they were not what I wanted. Now I use openSUSE. It is very good, I feel. Why don't you try openSUSE 10.3? It is the latest version.
ps: archlinux is pretty good. i am runing it on all my computers.
Ubuntu is my favorite distro because the apt-get tools will help to install softwares and automatically manage the dependency problems.
I have ever used Fedora Core 3, which drove me to the wall when installing software manually.
I have used Mandrake->Fedora->SuSe->Ubuntu. Out of these I like Ubuntu the most - it really made life simpler (even if you don't mind working the command line).
Why? For newbies, I would say, the main points are ease of use/maintenance & ease of installation of software.
Ubuntu (which is based on Debian) is great for both since it has excellent GUIs for most configuration tasks. It also has Synaptic which is a nice & easy GUI to install/remove/search for software (uses the apt-get system which automatically resolves all dependencies to install software).
SuSe/Mandrake/Fedora are equally good in terms of GUI and also have good front-ends for software management. They use the RPM system - dependencies were an issue here but with yum (which is an RPM equivalent of apt) that is mostly taken care of. But definitely apt has a much bigger selection of prepackaged software.
I would say start with Suse OR Ubuntu - both are very polished - use each for 3-4 months and see which one you like best since these are the leading distributions. By that time you will have enough knowledge/information to make a decision.
One more thing - in case you face issues with the latest version, don't blame the distro and don't say linux is useless - all versions take time to mature and fix bugs. Just try the previous mature version. Google is your friend.
HTH
Hi All,
I like Redhat Linux ditros AS, ES, Fedora..., may be because I'm familiar with it, and looks to me quite stable, packages management is very good.
Added to that, various tools especially for entreprise applications.
I really like DSL (please excuse the profanity in the name of the distro 
) because of its really small size. When compressed it weighs in at less than 50 MB and has a fully functional desktop (fluxbox), web browser (Dillo and Firefox), office suite (Beaver, FLWriter, etc.) and many other pre-installed programs. It is small enough to boot from a business card size CD and can perform a USB boot (with floppy support if needed). It also has really low memory consumpiton compared to other operating systems; for quite some time I dual booted MS-DOS (with Windows 3.1) and DSL on an old Compaq laptop I had sitting around and now it's not collecting dust anymore! Both operating systems coexisted quite nicely together since MS-DOS can be booted from a floppy and I can create a small partition just for Windows and a larger one for DSL, plus an additional partition for all my programs (I thought I would eventually install Wine so that I could use DSL in place of Win 3.1). DSL helped put new life in otherwise almost worthless hardware.
I voted for CentOS, it same RHEL. Using easy and powerful
Currently using Debian Etch. Nice and stable.
If I need anything more up to date (not that Etch is ancient) then I load it into VMWare.
Although I started out with Berkley UNIX in the 70's, I have used several distro's of *NIX since then. At present, I use a rehash of Ubuntu 8.04 known as Ultimate Edition 1.8. I like the distro for the intergration of compiz/beryl and the eye-candy helps me sell folks on Linux. Personally,anything I can do to forward the cause of open source is a good thing. Many of my customers (I run a small computer shop) have never heard of Linux or have no idea that it has advanced so much. The distro I run helps me convert people to open source. They see it and like it. Ubuntu has my vote.