Fedora for me. the speed of response to BZs is the best I've seen, and everything works out of the box, without trying to be like windows (like ubuntu/pclos/opensuse do)

I'd go for Kubuntu. But if you're so much accustomed to Windows and want to have that sort of feeling when using Linux, I suggest you try to use Linux Mint.

Just be sure you have an account on their forums cause I'm sure you'll experience some bugs along the way. But trust me, you'll love it.

I like fedora but had a crap experience with 11. Its installer crashed constantly unless you chose the defaults (showed how little testing they did - try setting a GRUB password, then renaming an OS entry - every time it leads to a fatal error).

Also its package manager was unbelievably slow.

For me, I use Ubuntu (Karmic beta), for the reason that its up to date, easy to get installed and to get multimedia etc.. working

Same experience with me. Fedora11 isn't as good as it's earlier versions.

I keep going back to ubuntu, or its lighter cousin kbuntu.

Same. And Kubuntu isnt lighter (if anything, Kubuntu is heavier) - maybe you mean Xubuntu?

Yeah i meant xbuntu... however, I haven't INSTALLED a linux distro on a physical machine in ages.

I mainly use it through Vmware. God bless Vmware - the perfect test environment.

You know whats awesome. Build an ubuntu (or whatever) system in a VM then use a tool called Remastersys which can create an installable livecd from a currently running system e.g i install and update ubuntu, get flash, dvd, java etc... sorted out as well as any apps i want, then rebuild it (Into a DVD iso) for install onto a physical box

use "remastersys dist"

Can you do that in a VM environment though then run disc on an actual real physical machine?