Tried OpenSuse 11, it was good. I didn't keep it long. Same for Fedora 11. I
have not used Mandriva (Tried Mandrake nearly 7 years ago and didn't care for
it).

I used Xubuntu for a time but then discovered Linux Mint, then went back to
Xubuntu but found the non-inclusion of sound/video software to be tiresome. I
know that there are ways to enable repositories and download appropriate sound
libraries for mp3 encoding and what-not, but it's not something I wish to do
with every fresh install. For my purposes, (and hey, Linux IS all about choice,
right) I prefer to have certain things work out of the box.

These days I run Mint on the Desktop PC and Cruchbang Linux on the laptop.Â
Even thought the KDE environment offers lots in the way of configuration, I like
the Openbox environment best these days. It does what it needs to and stays out
of my way. I've also switched away from default file manager PCMAN (in Crunch)
in favor of Thunar. I also like GNOME but only on my Desktop as it's more
powerful and has adequate RAM (2gig). LXDE did not do it for me, but I do like
the XFCE panel using ORAGE as my clock/calendar.