I'm looking for a new distro. Was running Arch Linux, but it's started crashing and I can't figure out how to fix it. If I'm gonna have to do a reinstall I may as well try something different.

Needs:

Free of charge.
KDE4.
Easy updates. Doesn't need to be fully automatic, I'm fine with running a command, but some LiveCD distros are ruled out here.
Install without formatting the root partition. Because my data is on it! I think most distros will let me do this.
Flash, non-free codecs. Preferably installed with the package manager.
Reliable. I don't want my system breaking again!
Long-term upgrade part. I don't want a distro where the new version is likely to require a fresh install, or something that's such a small project it might not be around next year.

Wants:

Does things by itself well, without stopping me having control. Basically I'm looking for the best of both worlds here. Arch gives a lot of control, but also means a lot of manual work; now I'm in employment I have less time for it.
Regular release cycle, at least annually.
Latest stable versions of major applications. Stuff like firefox, I don't wanna be stuck running 3.6.x for months after version 4 is out.
Either KDE4 or no desktop out of the box. Basically I'd rather not have gnome/xfce/whatever clutter around.
Good sized repos

Obviously several of the big names might be good. Kubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Mepis maybe. Also, what about sidux? A rolling-release distro, like Arch, has attractions, but will it be reliable, bearing in mind I broke my Arch.

Any suggestions/advice welcome.

hey cantab

first, what went wrong in ARCH?
xorg or what?

I have seen many saying Squeeze is now almost "rolling-release" like
I have been running squeeze as stable for awhile...
just yesterday I upgraded a old lenny install from lenny-to-squeeze-to-sid in less than 2 hrs with 0 problems
a first actually with debian..

I also like Meerkat; and Lucid too (Meerkat has highest firefox of any distro I have seen)

being you like KDE4, I dont think they all use the same kde4 version do they?

as for Sidux it has many enhancements over reg sid; but I had a few issues with it wanting to fsck all partitions at boot and some other odd behavious but maybe they have changed that by now as I had it installed 3 mos ago...

I only run ubuntu lucid/meerkat ,debian squeeze/sid ,slack current and arch testing
all testing

I've got two threads about the Arch trouble, one here and one on Arch forums. But yeah, it seems to be an X problem.

Debian, either Lenny or Squeeze, could be a thought, but historically releases have been more like every two years, a bit infrequent for my liking. And I tried running testing before, once - it didn't go well.

It's a good point about the KDE version. Are there any distros that track the KDE releases. A fair few, notably Ubuntu, track Gnome, but I don't know of any that explicitly track KDE. Although with KDE now adopting the six-month cycle ubuntu does also track it well.

Being that your running x86_64 changes somethings cantab
I think Alien Bob's Multilib is awesome compared to trying to run firefox and flash x86_64 on arch x86_64
I am also running both slack and arch x86_64 and must say that Alien's multilib makes a huge difference plus the x86_64 flash is having many issues huh?

have you thought about slackware current with new KDE 4.4.5, xorg 1.7.7
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...urrent-820485/

add alien's multilib to that and you got a nice stable distro:
slackware most stable trouble-free distro I have ever run, hands down

I wouldn't necessarily run x86_64 on my next system. I've got only 2GB of RAM, so I'm not sure it actually brings me any benefits.

I run a 64-bit Slackware on half of my computers, yet all of those have 2 GB of RAM, or less. The 64-bit OS just feels snappier, and you'll see advantages especially in computationally-intensive tasks (like video transcoding).

Slackware would fit your needs and wants just fine.

Eric

yep
the amd athlon64 I made/make the x86_64 livecd/kernel is running slackware current with Bob's multilib and I have 1gb ram with no graphics card, sis crappy intergrated graphics and I concur it runs much faster than slackware x86 on same PC as my PC can run both 32 and 64 I found out

in fact cantab, you can testdrive slackware current x86_64 with Alien's multilib pre-installed and firefox/flash 32bit
off your usb or hdd partition
http://multidistro.com/NFLUXNEW/SQ4/slack.html

the one at the bottom
it has fluxbox though, although I could/should maybe make a KDE4.4.5 module for it....
that might take awhile though as kde is big...

but anyway, thats why i make the livecd stuff cause like in slackware's instance, a user doesn't have a chance to "testdrive" it cause slakcware doesn't come as Livecd...except my unofficial slackware-based stuff and SalixOS
have you checked out salixOS?
I dont think it comes with KDE but you could add it...

Well, I think I've fixed my Arch system, and the cause of the problems is upstream, specifically a bug in Xorg 1.8. So I don't think I'll be switching soon after all.