Decisive about my indecision

I was going to make a poll about this, but I figured a blog would be a better way of finding an answer for the fact a poll question will only give you a choice without the rhyme and/or reason for the decision.

Ok, so here goes.. I currently have a laptop which was converted to a full-fledged Linux laptop not too long ago. In place of my 20 GB Windows XP partition is now Arch Linux. My other partition, which is about 8 GB's, contains openSUSE 10.3. I've recently tried out Mandriva One 2008 (KDE), Linux Mint 3.1, Ubuntu 7.10 RC, and Granular FunWorks Edition. All of these distro's are great in their own right, which is probably the reason I cannot make up my mind on just one. The benefits of Mandriva is that it is easy to use, hardware detection is stellar, and although I'm more of a Gnome fan, I do like the KDE version of 2008.

Linux Mint is what I refer to as Ubuntu for the lazy or inexperienced. Everything you could want or need is already on the disk and if there's something not in there that you do want, it's simple enough to get. With that being said, why is Ubuntu even on my list then? Ubuntu is what Mint is based on and will be updated first and more regularly than a specialized distro such as Mint. It is for this reason I would probably rather Ubuntu over Mint for the fact it's more cutting edge and is first in line for updates.

Granular is cool and reminds me of both Mandriva and PCLOS. I've kind of strayed away from RPM distro's for the simple fact that Debian and Debian-based distro's seem superior as far as dependency issues. That doesn't mean I will never use Fedora or openSUSE again, it's just that I prefer to be able to update and upgrade my system with as little fuss as possible.

I'm versed enough to know that recommending a distribution to someone without knowing their experience is fruitless, so let's just say I'm an average computer user (email, browsing, the occasional DVD and .mp3) who likes to tinker and would get bored without having something to tweak or install (this is the main reason I have Arch installed as my primary OS), but I would like something that is stable and expandable, simple enough for my family to use but technical enough to keep me intrigued. I'm leaning more towards Ubuntu, but if anyone has any recommendations, please let me know!