in order, from best to worst

linux from scratch
slackware
crux
gentoo
arch
debian sid
debian wheezy
debian squeeze

Install Gentoo

"best" distro

hahahaha

I understand this is an opinionated question hence why I'm looking for more input to narrow it down HF isnt helpful

which package manager do you like the most?
which distro do you prefer over the other distros that share the same package manager?

I like Xubuntu, and you just said you hate Ubuntu. That could mean you hate Unity to you hate everything about it, so...

ubuntu was good until it got that dumb update which i think mightve been unity, it went from really lightweight to really slow

arch
r
c
h

ubuntu or mint if you want idiot proof

arch or gentoo for coolkids

Xubuntu uses the Xfce UI instead of Unity. Considering I was able to install it on a computer that was having problems installing Windows 7, I would say it's pretty lightweight.

arch was really nice

crunchbang is cool

How can someone hate Ubuntu but love Mint? They're literally the same thing except mint has some extra packages pre-installed and a different skin.

Anyway I'm a big arch fan, but it depends on your needs and I'm guessing if you like Mint that much you're wanting something that's a little more ready to go after the install, and Mint and openSUSE have been quite good in that space lately.

ok no

as a linux sysadmin and long time user it depends on how comfortable you are with linux, especially the cli- ubuntu is more user-friendly, while with gentoo/slack you'll be pretty hard pressed to make it easy to use/maintain. i personally use ubuntu simply because it isn't difficult to take care of (i do enough fixing broken shit at work), but i also have experience with free/openbsd, debian, centos, arch, etc

I'm sorry you couldn't tell it was a joke.

i thought it might be but i know people who legit think like this so i figured it wasn't

I really like the latest Xubuntu (version 12.10), it's simple, looks clean and works right out off t he box.

jdcaron@2500k:~$ uptime
20:20:26 up 38 days, 2:16, 4 users, load average: 0.27, 0.31, 0.32

http://www.makeuseof.com/pages/best-linux-distributions

Give that a read. It's still a good guide imo, even if some of the descriptions kind of are lacking.

Honestly, with linux you just have to try out various ones and settle in with some that fits your needs. For example I use mint for my home system but have to use red hat based systems at work.

+1 Xubuntu

Depending on the thickness of your neckbeard i would say

Elementary OS
Mint
Debian
Gentoo

In that order.

kubuntu, xubuntu, or linux mint are all probably the best gaming/desktop distros right now. ubuntu has the best overall support but its new window manager really ruins it. there might be more ubuntu based distros that keep up to date but I'm not sure.
I use xubuntu, love it a lot. Reminds me of when I was running debian.
If you're willing to do a lot of setting things up yourself then debian and archlinux are also very good choices.
I hear good things about fedora all the time but I've never read much about it or used it so I can't comment.

lubuntu isn't awful. mostly just ubuntu with all the fluff removed.

ARCH yeah yeah yeah

Stick with Mint, I guess you're looking to play TF2 on it as well?
At least you won't have to take 2 days to set it up properly and maintain it over time :)