I started with slackware, and love it to this day. I never seen it as elitist, or more hands on. It took me a while to get more into 'package mangers' but now, I just cannot put the ubuntu down. As crappy as the documentation on so many packages is, they still do the trick - quickly, and easily.

If I was starting fresh, it would be with Ubunutu for sure. I also <3 KDE.