Time to look for another distribution?

I was putting off an upgrade of Mandrake until 9.2 was officially released as stable. But it looks like maybe I should not even consider running Mandrake anymore. This [http://www.mandrakesoft.com/partners/advertising] isn't exactly a day brightener. I set things to avoid spammy ads. I certainly don't want some clown making my screen advertise at me (or anyone else) when the screensaver kicks in. Nor do I want any "default pages" that I do not have 100% control over. My machine, my rules dammit.

Yes, this is only in the download version. But if I'm gonna pay for a distribution, you know what? I'll pay for a different one. And besides, maybe xine will actually work then. Though it will be annoying to move all my data files and get my preferred programs and settings going again. It might be simple enough to remove the ads, at least beyond the install, but I'd rather not have to.

Okkay, I'm not a deep hacker in linux. That was why I was using Mandrake. Recommendations for alternatives? What I'm looking for is something with ease of installation, ease of use, decent security, and ideally the good sense to not prepend Linux with three letters and a slash. And no damned ads.

Or maybe I should ask about experiences with recent versions of various distributions.