My Linux distro of choice is Arch. I know a lot of people who have switched to Arch and everyone seems to like it a lot.

If you don't want something quite as hands on as Arch, I've also been hearing good things about Mint.

Since Arch doesn't come with a window manager out of the box, while you're trying new things, try installing a tiling window manager as well. Awesome[1] and Xmonad[2] are both good choices. If you want to be a power user of your window manager, you'll want to check out a tiling WM at some point.

[1] http://awesome.naquadah.org/

[2] http://xmonad.org/

Ubuntu was always just a Debian knock-off with a different theme, why not go for the original and the best?

http://www.debian.org/

I've heard Linux Mint is a good alternative to Ubuntu not tried it personally though.

I'm using Linux Mint at the moment. I chose it after upgrading Ubuntu to 12.04 when things became unstable. Linux Mint is pretty good so far. It's stable, and uses a mix of Gnome 3 and MATE for the desktop environment.

I'm also using Mint but LMDE, the debian version with XFCE as a desktop. Cinnamon looks alright but XFCE is nice on Mint.

Arch may not be the system for complete beginners, but if you've been on Ubuntu since 8.04 (4 years I think), you'll definitely know enough to set it up.

The Arch wiki and user guides are fantastic, I've not yet found anything that there wasn't a wikipage for.

The whole point of arch is that you only install exactly what you need, but you also have access to the latest and greatest packages. Plus the AUR system is so much better than PPAs...

I've had the same annoyances/issues when using recent base Ubuntu distros.

I really dislike alterations in user interfaces for what seems to be little end benefit, so looked around and found Xfce and LXDE which both have Ubuntu variants.

I've been running Lubuntu for a few weeks now and have been quite happy, and hopefully it will only change at a glacial pace.

I switched to Kubuntu after running Ubuntu up until the unity releases. It's not as close to the windows shortcuts as ubuntu 10.04, and some things don't work as well. For instance 'safely removing' a USB drive doesn't power the drive down.

Windows 7 leaves drives powered up too whereas Windows XP didn't. I suspect the change was made for people who want to keep charging their devices.

I use Arch and have gotten two other developers to switch to it from Ubuntu and Xubuntu, they also think it's awesome.

The reason I switched to Arch was because Unity breaks all sorts of Gnome things, and I didn't want to use Unity. I love Arch.

I like lubuntu a lot, but LXDE is a little harder to tweak than Gnome 2.

Give Fedora a shot.

Ubuntu Studio - its Ubuntu without the crap.

Isn't it Ubuntu for Multimedia Work?

Yes, but its still Ubuntu underneath and can be tuned/tweaked/used for anything else .. its just go the realtime stuff nailed for media production.

XFCE http://digitizor.com/2011/08/04/linus-torvalds-ditches-gnome...

But which distribution?

Xubuntu ?

I am running Xubuntu now on my laptop and I can tell you that it comes recommended for me. Its very light on system resources and extremely fast. I hate UNITY and not a fan of GNOME 3. Do try it out.

Me too. It's fast, but not extremely fast actually.

Previously, I use arch linux and love it. But not recomended for beginners.