Modular Distros - Rolling

[vikrang]

I need some suggestions on choosing among the foll distros

1. Arch
2. Slackware
3.Zenwalk
4. Gentoo or variant (Sabayon)

I would like to install one of the above.

My requirements

1. Simple
2. Lot of packages/ Repos (Popular)
3.Flexibility in changing WM, DE ,Themes etc
3.Stability
4. Good Package manager which takes care of all dependencies , upgrades etc
5. Excellent hardware support particularly for (NVIDIA Driver,Broadcom Wireless BCM4311, Sound driver -snd-hda-intel (Sigmatel STAC 92XX) , Microdia Webcam,Hp All in one Printer 4200- The above took my life away on Arch before i gave up after writing to various fora!!


Doubts

1. Arch is superb but for a relatively intermediate user lke me, it can make or break the system if you dont know what u r doing..On one occasion my kernel got upgraded as a dependency while installing OS and I could not boot Xorg..

2.From what I read Zenwalk seems to be midway between Arch and Slack as it is slightly conservative in terms of Updating core packages (stable)

3. Major complaint abt Slackware seems to be the slowness in upgrading to newer developments...But it looks impressive nevertheless ..I dont know why it is not as popular as Debian since its an old distro

4. Gentoo - I am extremely impressed and feel i can learn a lot as I move from scratch...i dont mind going through the rigour of the indstallation steps ..But one major worry is the time factor since it compiles from source and I cant be installing for hours together ..I dont have patience..If there is a precompiled package list for Gentoo which can be installed from emerge, I can look at that

Please advise

[oz]

I need some suggestions on choosing among the foll distros

1. Arch
2. Slackware
3.Zenwalk
4. Gentoo or variant (Sabayon)

I would like to install one of the above.

My requirements

1. Simple
2. Lot of packages/ Repos (Popular)
3.Flexibility in changing WM, DE ,Themes etc
3.Stability
4. Good Package manager which takes care of all dependencies , upgrades etc
5. Excellent hardware support particularly for (NVIDIA Driver,Broadcom Wireless BCM4311, Sound driver -snd-hda-intel (Sigmatel STAC 92XX) , Microdia Webcam,Hp All in one Printer 4200- The above took my life away on Arch before i gave up after writing to various fora!!

If your number one requirement is "simple", you need to stick with Zenwalk because none of the other distros that you mentioned above are oriented toward new Linux users, although new users are in no way prohibited from using them other than by their own abilities.

[arochester]

There are other rolling releases - PCLinuxOS, aptosid, Foresight Linux and Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE)

If you want try simplicity try LMDE