Need some help deciding on a distro (done my homework though)

[kivech]

Hi all,

I'm not new to linux, but reentered the scene after having been on that "other" OS for some years. Trust me, don't buy Vista.

Anyway, I have given a quick look at some of the more popular distros that are out there at the moment (Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Suse). And I've been mainly using Ubuntu/Kubuntu.

My gripe with many of these systems are the following:
1) Either configuration options have been limited too much.
2) Or package managers don't work well.
3) Or support is lacking.

I need to assert for myself if I have to take one of the "bad" sides of one of the distros that I already tried, or go for another, less commonly used distro.

I prefer the KDE desktop for its flexibility, but I like the Gnome desktop for its stability. Whichever I would go for, as long as it works or I can get it working, I'm fine with.

This is what the distro should work with:

GA-X38-DQ6 motherboard (one of Gigabyte's newest)
ATI X1900 video card.
HP PSC 750 printer/scanner (hot item since in some cases it works, in others it doesn't). The HPLIP-Toolbox utility is fundamental for me here (which often doesn't work, no matter what distro you pick).
The rest of my hardware seems to work on all distros out of the box, so no worries there.
It has to support x86_64. (No I'm not willing to reconsider, since I paid quite a bit of money to assemble my "top-notch" system, so I want to be able to use its capabilities also )

Then as far as the software environment is concerned:

- It needs to be stable. I use my PC for work as well and I cannot afford funny surprizes where suddenly I cannot use my PC anymore.
- It needs to be flexible (If there's anything I don't like I need to be able to alter it to my hearts content without being limited by how a certain distro was set up. I'll compile the kernel and all software around it manually if I have to, but I really hate to be told what it is I'm supposed to use, whether it actually works or not). Ok, I'm exhaggerating a bit, but you get my point.
- I need a good development toolset for the common development environments in Linux.
- Security is also a pretty high priority for me. Since I work with my PC also, that data needs to be absolutely secure.
- A good package manager. (I'm absolutely hooked on apt which is used in Ubuntu, however I'm not too happy with Ubuntu itself and the new road they picked with their new LTS version which is in beta at the moment.)

To anticipate a couple of ideas:

I would have died to have a 64 bits version of Slackware. Really, believe me. It was the first distro I started with about 15 years ago or so, and always loved its flexibility. To be honest though, I do like the nice fancy boot screens that distros like OpenSuse, Mandriva and Fedora offer.

Despite my preference for KDE, at this point I wouldn't want to use KDE 4. I really don't like the way it handles menus (very user unfriendly in my mind and one of the reasons I abandoned Vista), so I'd like to hold off going for KDE 4.x until they give the option to use the old style menu. To be honest, I think KDE 4 looks uggly. *ducks*

I realize I'm quite picky with what I'm looking for, but please keep in mind that I put a lot of very valuable time in my work on my PC. So it has to really run flawless and without any concerns about data security or contingency.

That said, I don't mind if I have to install things in a harder way if that is the only way to give me the flexibility I'm looking for in a system. I've compiled stuff before, so why not again.
It's just that I find that all of the major distros always have some curcial elements that are either neglected, not working well, or completely absent. Which I think is one of the reasons why the average computer owner still shies away from Linux. Although, looking at Vista, one can honestly say that Linux starts becoming a decent alternative, also considering how it grew and matured over the past years.

Anyway, please suggest a couple of distros that you think would meet my needs. Or, call me crazy and tell me to take certain downsides in order to get part of what I'm looking for and compromise on other aspects.

If only there would be a Gnome like desktop environment with the flexibility of KDE. But that would make a different subject altogether.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Kivech

[badfish591]

maybe look into gentoo, i'm not 100% sure about all your compatibility requests, but it is rather flexable, you will be doing some compiling yourself, but its not hung up with a crap-ton of dependancies like other distros, its worth checking on at least.