Recommend a Linux distro

I'd need a new Linux distro, please recommend me some based on the following:

1. I hate compiling. I hate wasting my time to try software; I want to install, try, and uninstall very quickly, as you would do in Windows. I like software made of a single file (or a directory with subfolders) I can copy by hand and it works. I know this is hardly found in Linux but a least I'd like a decent package system and a wide library of binaries.

2. I love latest versions of Firefox, libSDL-devel, etc.

3. I hate the FHS because it's a mess and everything is mixed up in shitboxes. I know it'll be hard to avoid if I want compiled stuff, though, but a few recommendations on distros using a sane directory design would be good too.

4. I like Windows NT.

5. I'm a developer, but remember I don't want to waste my time compiling stuff, linking kernels, etc., I have a tight agenda of stuff I need to get done, and I'm not getting paid to compile other's code, but to get my own working.

Thanks in advance

Oh, I forgot a couple of things:

6. I like KDE, but I love the command line, especially for file management and stuff I do frequently. (I'm not too hot for GNOME.)

7. I hate how X stuff, especially GTK applications, draw and redraw fucking slow (as in "25 times slower than Win32 even using official supported accelerated drivers").

8. I hate case-sensitiveness (probably not related to any distro, but perhaps you can throw some other recommendations in).

Thanks again.

A few of the things you ask for are pretty much impossible - case sensitivity, for example, is here to stay.

Apart from that you might try GoboLinux. http://www.gobolinux.org/
The name sounds kinda lame but it's the only distro I know of to be attempting what you, and many others, would consider to be a sane directory structure. I haven't got around to trying it yet, but you sure can.

You can actually "install, try and uninstall very quickly" in APT based distros - ie Debian and its derivatives - and since Debian is so popular there's a .deb package for pretty much any given program. Still have to deal with the traditional directory structure though.

Your ideal distro according to your criteria doesn't exist as far as I know. Maybe you should make your own.

(Windows trolls incoming in 3...2...1...)

>>3
Thank you very much for your reply

case sensitivity, for example, is here to stay.
Any case-insensitive case-preserving filesystems/kernels in the horizon?

you might try GoboLinux
The description in that site sounds great! I'll try it as soon as I can.

APT based distros
I see; I'll evaluate Debian too.

Maybe you should make your own.
I assure you I would, if I had time. At least I'll give my two cents in everything I ever write, following these conventions (never ever relying on the FHS, just use its own directory; never ever distributing sources without binaries; etc).

(Windows trolls incoming in 3...2...1...)
Lol, I'll try to call them off: I already use Windows (a tuned version of Windows 2000 is my primary OS), I just need and want Linux too.

UNIX is naturally case sensitive, so any kernels that aren't probably lack in other areas of UNIX compatability as well.

If you have Windows XP, you might try Windows Services for UNIX.  It's like Cygwin, except since it's from Microsoft, it's probably better integrated into Windows.  Anyway, it allows you to enjoy some of the benefits of a Unix system without having to actually have one.

>>5
Yeah, I already do that, I have a combination of native ports and Cygwin, plus other useful scripts and my own (which are also ported to Linux). I work a lot on the command line so I love all of it. I'm just required to work on Linux too.

You can force the shells to be case insensitive, but I know of no way to make GTK and Qt insensitive.

If only there were some way. Case preservation is a good thing, but case sensitivity is gayer than gay.

>>7
Case preservation is a good thing, but case sensitivity is gayer than gay.
I wholeheartedly agree. And why in Earth is case sensitive the default for anything, even text editor searches in Unix? Case sensitivity must be a religious issue for some.

>>8
Nah, more of a correctness thing.
simply because a != A. different shape and size.

>>8

Unix filesystems don't do case folding because deciding whether two bytes represent the same "character" requires knowing the encoding used. E.g. for ISO-646-NO, codes 91 & 123 would be equal (upper- and lower- case AE ligature), but for US-ASCII they are different (left bracket and left brace).

Essentially, the issue is that a Unix filename is a string of bytes, not characters, with no specific encoding. It's entirely possible to have filenames in different encodings on the same filesystem (and not all that uncommon in practice, e.g. a shared web server hosting multiple sites where different sites use different filename encodings).

Windows tries to force the issue by using 16-bit Unicode throughout, with the end result that a lot of software fails badly if you use anything other than ASCII.