[NTLUG:Discuss] Distro Recomendation

[Johnny Cybermyth]

I've been able to convince the lead engineer at my company to evaluate 
embedded Linux over windows CE for memory management reasons.  He has 
heard good things about Linux, but has never used it.  Today he comes in 
asking for my recommendation for a distro.  He was also asking about the 
presence of a compiler with a visual program builder.  I told him I'd 
give him some distros to play with on Monday, but I'd like some 
suggestions from you guys.

I immediately thought a KDE-based distro with KDevelop would be the best 
candidate, so SUSE is what I'm leaning toward now.  I'm a GNOME user 
myself, but it seems that there are more "polished" apps available for 
KDE than there are for GNOME.  Anyone agree or disagree?

Chris also mentioned that SUSE had great hardware detection which I 
would place as a high priority given that this is an evaluation run. 
Bad experiences and perceptions weigh the same as facts under these 
circumstances.

Any thoughts are appreciated.  Thanks in advance!