Ubuntu

Very fast, clean desktop, lots of apps, drivers downloaded during installation, it couldn't get better. Very user-friendly.

Absolutely a great GNU/Linux distribution, especially for newbies. Everything "just works", exactly the way you want it to.

I think that the Mac OS X is the best alternative... but Ubuntu being free is my number one choice. Absolutely in love with Ubuntu.

Have you tried SuperOS or LinuxMint? (I like SuperOS more) and have they also had the crashing problem that you mention? Just for comparison, because that is mostly what I have used. I rarely if ever use flat Ubuntu. For portability on my USB sticks I use Slitaz or Austrumi, but haven't had a problem with either of them.

I actually can find repositories that have all of the programs I use. So I dont usually need to compile them, but there are a few games and programs that I have compiled because there is no other way to get them installed. (at least not with the latest version) and How you talked about the single click RPM creation, there are a few programs that do that for DEBs as well. (i think its like debreate and a few others) but I personnaly have not tried them yet.

For the Screen dimming. On my Gateway laptop I have never had that happen, but on a friend of mines HP it does, but that was with an older version of Ubuntu the newer ones didnt do that.

All in all, glad that you found a linux OS that you like though. Thats one nice thing about there being so many Distros. I have only minimally tried OpenSUSE, maybe one of these days I can spend more time testing it, and see how it is. One reason why I stuck with Ubuntu based is because I do a lot of studio work, and I like PureDyne and Ubuntu Studio, because they have the real-time kernels and other optimizations, and pre-configurations that help me quickly do what I need to do. Is there a OpenSUSE based derivative that is similar to those studio based versions that you know of?

Oh did I say bug? The most annoying bug that I hate in Ubuntu is screen brightness auto configuration. every time I turn on the machine the screen brightness automatically becomes dim, and I have to adjust it.
Did you say report bugs? I can't even remember how many times I have reported a bug or tried to report a bug and found out it has been reported by many many others! now this is not something bad, it is actually good. it means that the system is getting better! But when I found a bug has been reported a long time ago many times but it has not been fixed yet I find this really disappointing.

by short updates I don't mean updates that are small! what I mean is shortage of efficient updates and most importantly shortage of update support! 18 month of support couldn't be that bad, but when there you are stuck with an old system and annoying bugs, the only option is to upgrade. But if users are going to upgrade in, then there should be a safe rout to do so. I mys self had the bad experience of upgrading and losing data, although I was prepared and had a backup plan, and I turned the loss of data just to a loss of time. but still this is not a very convenient way to be up to date.
Exactly! Beta ware! and it is the nature of Debian based systems. If Ubuntu was RPM based, probably it would have been more stable. But that is what Ubuntu is and there is nothing to do about it.