
This (quite long) article has been written by me for two primary reasons: One, to hopefully save someone else the time and hassle associated with trying out various Linux distributions, and two, to promote some discussion and feedback regarding what a modern Linux distribution should be, and of course to contrast this with what is currently available. I am exploring the offerings of MS Windows, BeOS and MacOSX, and then taking on a number of well-known Linux distributions.
Well, one can't try all that, it is a HUGE job to do so. Linux is linux, no matter if the flavors are a bit different.
For the most part, Xandros, Lycoris and Lindows have a common goal (the desktop), so their offerings are similar and they were represented in this article by Ark Linux. Slackware and Debian are the geek/dev person's Linux, and were represented by the similar Gentoo (even if they are not source-based exactly).
Overall, I believe that the article had at least one representative of each "Linux category".