BashLogic wrote(*a bit off topic* @moderator, feel free to split this thread ;) )
I cant help myself, I just have to ask. on what basis do you people compare distros and how do you deduce which distro is better than the other. what are the things that you take into consideration? what are the instruments by which you measure?
A lot of things:
1. How much that distribution contributes to upsteam (explains the dominance of fedora/opensuse/debian).
2. How easy it is for me to rebuild packages with different configure options (Arch/gentoo/etc..)
3. Intelligent package management (arch/gentoo/ubuntu/debian). if you value good package management, you'll steer away from RPM distros.
4. Ease of use for newbies. (opensuse, mandriva,etc..). Ubuntu is supposedly easy to use for newbies but it breaks very easily.
5. Security which is kind of a philosophical thing. How long did it take slackware to adopt PAM? I for example think sudo is a terrible for security. you tell users they can do functions without needing root password but they can still do 'sudo su -' which defeats the purpose. It's like telling thieves you won't give them the key to your house but instead their house keys will now work on your house too. These days we have polkit/dbus for administrative operations. Distributions no long need to keep users in the dark ages by suggesting the use of sudo. In other words, the faster a distribution dumps old methods and moves to new more secure ones, the more secure I think this distribution is
6. Another thing with security is how fast reported bugs triage process and researching solutions takes.
7. The distribution should have developers and not just package maintainers. Anyone can maintain packages.