Up until now, I would have ranked Mandrake Linux about Number 4 on my personal list of favorite Linux distros. After this past month of really getting to work with it on a daily basis, I would have to move it up the ranks to Number 2--right behind SuSE and ahead of Red Hat.

It is not Number One with me yet, because of the problems I mentioned earlier. These were just enough to offset Mandrake Linux from being my favorite. It was a near thing. One thing I have never enjoyed about SuSE is its disagreeability with non-SuSE RPM packages. Not only was it pleasurable to use a distribution that had "standard" RPMs (if there is such a thing), but the presence of the Mandrake Cooker development project meant that I was getting access to RPMs for programs that were only a few days out from their initial releases. But, when I weighed this against my issues with Mandrake Linux, I found Mandrake Linux was a little short on the overall categories.

How close was my subjective comparison? Close enough that I no longer feel pressured to migrate back to my "home" SuSE platform anytime soon. I plan on keeping Mandrake Linux running for quite some time. While overall I found it to be slightly less than SuSE's performance, there is no denying the allure that the WineX application has for me as a user. The ability to run Windows-based games inside Linux is a siren's song when I put the reviewer's hat away.

So, for now, Mandrake Linux runs a very close second for me in the Linux distribution category. For other power users, I suspect that this might be a similar conclusion. For the home user to which this distro is targeted, there is no doubt in my mind that Mandrake Linux is the best offering I have seen to date for that audience.

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