Ubuntu is the one I settled on.

I went through a long process of installing various distribs, sometimes reinstalling because I screwed them up so bad, other times just for fun to see something new.

More packages I wanted were in deb only, and I got tired of fighting dependencies under redhat flavors. A noob can fight deps for years and never win

I'm not experienced with Linux, so I wouldn't even consider anything too tricky. I also required OpenOffice and other similar tools, so that ruled out some others.

Ubuntu was a contender, and for a user like me there's much about it to like. But I wanted Linux for my Thinkpad X41 precisely because XP Pro was chewing a huge proportion of the battery life just booting up. To my dismay, altho' Ubuntu obviously boots a lot quicker than XP, total battery life was even worse.

I know, there are things you can do - but you have to want to do them. I wanted the laptop to work effectively with the least interference from me, that's all.

So when I discovered that Mandriva (with one small tweak - turning off Bluetooth at boot) could deliver c.25-30% longer battery life, it was an easy choice.

I prefer Debian and Ubuntu for all of my installations. I've tried various other flavors since 1999, and I always come back to the Debian family.