Let's start with Mandriva:
Installation: The Free DVD version is much better in my opinion. The live/install One CD is good if you want to get to know Mandriva. But if you want to install it, go for the DVD edition. The Mandriva installer worked fine for me in both, although a very annoying thing in the One installer was that there was no "back" button!
Package management: I am a bit spoiled by APT, so Mandriva URPMI wasn't that good in my opinion. I did install Smart. But I don't like Smart that much.
Artwork: Mandriva Free has beautiful blue artwork, while One has an annoying orange one. You can change that but not easily. The icon of the K menu (if you use KDE) is not that easy to change, besides it is oversized. In fact, it's huge!
Package selection: You get all the usual suspects (Firefox, OOo, etc). But as you should expect, the Free DVD has more software.
Management: The Mandriva Control Center makes your life a lot easier. You almost never have to go near the Terminal or type any commands, except for adding repositories from the EasyURPMI site.
Thoughts: The most annoying thing that I encountered in Mandriva 2007 was that when there was an update, you will have to select the packages to be updated manually. This was very annoying. This was fixed in 2007.1. What Mandriva needs to get back to where Mandrake (Mandriva's precursor!) was, is to remove the confusion the users have developed thanks to a bad website and lots of versions to choose from.
I had Mandriva on my REX but removed it after sometime. I got bored of the slow URPMI (which downloads packages and updates one by one). REX is currently running Ubuntu 7.04.
I will revisit Mandriva when 2008 is released sometime this month, God willing.
Now it's Ubuntu's turn:
Installation: I use the standard (live/install) CD. I also downloaded those for Kubuntu and Xubuntu to try them. The installer in all of them was the same as the one that was introduced with Ubuntu 6.06. An addition, however, was the Windows migration tool. I didn't use it so I can't comment on how good it was.
Package management: It's based on Debian, so it has APT. Now add Automatix to install all the software that you want and you have one of the easiest distros to manage software in.
Artwork: It's Ubuntu!!! They will never change the brown theme! It's not bad at all, it's just OLD. They need to change it to add a touch of freshness to this distro. Artwork for Kubuntu and Xubuntu remained almost the same too.
Packages: The usual suspects. But you have a huge repo and Automatix.
Thoughts: Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) added some nice additions to Ubuntu like the addition of the codec installer, the restricted driver module and easy to use Compiz. Almost none of these features are available in Kubuntu or Xubuntu (except the restricted driver module in Xubuntu). Xubuntu is completely uninspired. It confused. It doesn't look like a regular XFCE distro like ZenWalk. Instead, it looks almost like Ubuntu. While Ubuntu is fine, but XFCE has it's own character that is different from Ubuntu's GNOME.
Kubuntu however is good, but it lacks the advanced features of Ubuntu, and it also lacks a characteristic configuration method of any kind. You only get KDE's configuration tools.
Ubuntu 7.04 is really good. I have my two systems running it. But I always wish it was perfect. Looking forward to 7.10, due in October.
As for Fedora 7, I have already stated my opinion on UbuntuForums. Here is what I said:
I installed Fedora 7 twice. The first time, installation went fine, I added Livna and started installing stuff using Yumex. Then I discovered that almost everything I installed had a missing dependency. This has never ever happened to me in any distro I have used. Never! I removed and reinstalled the packages and they worked fine. But I decided that I needed a fresh install.
On the second install, everything went smoothly, which gave me time to think about Fedora. The package manager is a pain in the back. For example, the update manager tells me that there are updates but doesn't tell me their size or how much time is remaining for individual packages. I have a slow DSL line (256 Kbps) and downloading updates without knowing when they will finish is annoying. Moreover, I don't want to use Yumex anymore, because of my previous experience. As for Smart, it's good but I didn't install Fedora just to use Smart, you know!
Apart from the package manager, I had a Gnome desktop. I realized that with the exception of a nice GUI to configure Samba, there is very little difference between Fedora and Ubuntu. I am not saying that Ubuntu invented Gnome. But when you have a distro with a better package manager, better repos, better forums and better wikis and documentation on the web, what will make me go and use Fedora... The Smaba GUI, no thanks!
The other RPM distros that I used and had to bear the bad package management were Mandriva, PCLOS and openSUSE. They had somethings to offer that Ubuntu doesn't have: Better KDE and a user-friendly control panel. Ubuntu doesn't have these.
That's what I think of Fedora!
Now, it's PCLinuxOS 2007's turn:
Apart from the cheesy name, this is a very good distro. A very, very good distro. The only problem that I felt (By the way, I almost didn't run into any problem using this distro) is that PCLOS is uninspired. I feel that it's not its own distro. You get the best parts of every other distro, but where is the PCLOS character? Even the looks was made similar to Windows XP!!!
The only missing feature is that Synaptic (the GUI for the package manager) lacks an "Update" utility, which means that you won't be notified of new updates, instead you will have to check for updates yourself using Synaptic or simply "apt-get update" from the terminal. But this is only a minor problem.
So for me, the winner was Ubuntu followed closely by PCLOS. The clear loser was Fedora 7!
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