It is difficult to stick with one distro. But, there does come a time when you suddenly install one and you suddenly realise that,yes, this is the one for me. I had that happen when I put SuSE 9.1 on a drive on my old PC. I won the full set including manuals so I was at an advantage then but there are some very good off the shelf books around for many distros.
You mentioned Ubuntu and were rather nonplussed by it? Have you taken a look at Kubuntu? It's Debian like Ubuntu but instead of the Gnome desktop it has KDE, hence the 'K'ubuntu

Now, I liked Ubuntu but wasn't enraptured enough for it to make me think I wanted to move to it from SuSE. I'm not a Gnome fan, which doesn't mean I hate it or anything as I do quite like it I simply prefer KDE. Kubuntu I like a lot and could happily use it in a productive environment.
To get back on topic.... Xandros. I presume a deal must have been done with Linux User and Developer then because they carried Xandros on one of their cover disks I think it was last month?