Best of PCLinux

After spending considerable time with PCLinux, I have decided to replace it. Two biggest drawbacks of PCLinuxOS : ever crashing synaptic (the application manager), and inability to detect external USB drive.
Both were becoming issues that I could not ignore anymore. The external USB drive had no problems with Opensuse or Windows.

PCLinux still rates as the most user friendly distro. Some features that are worth mentioning :
1. The Partition tool : unlike the one seen in Opensuse, this tool offers greater control over the mounting and unmounting process; is much more informative with regard to the relative location of each partition. This is a tool that deserves to be standardised across as distros.

2. The Application Manager : unlike Opensuse, where the repositories need to be configured discretely, Synaptic offers a single interface where one can configure repositories as well as install/uninstall apps. It is also much easier to modify the behaviour of the manager to retain downloaded rpms for later use. This is another tool that deserves to be standardised across all distros.

3. The hardware GUI features are also quite good, but here Opensuse is an equal. Hardware GUI refers to the presence of GUI tools to manipulate hardware aspects like Graphics card monitor, network card etc.

PCLinux 2008 is already available, though I have not tested it yet. So far in the latest crop of distros I have sampled Kubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 9 and both fall significantly short in user friendliness, when compared to Opensuse 11, which is what I intend to use as the default. Opensuse 10.3 which I have begun using increasingly is more stable in the app. management field, and for the time being that is more important that the other advantages that PC Linux offers.