With regard to yum especially, yum 2.2 in Fedora Core 3 addresses lots of the shortfauls in yum 2.0 (it now has .repo files, which are more like apt's Packages/Releases, instead of thousands of little .hdr files).
A wee correction here. The .repo files in /etc/yum.repo.d are in fact just configuration files. Sections of the original yum.conf that can now be put in their own files. The benefit here is that repositories can supply their own .repo files for you to download and install and also it allows RPM's to contain information that allows them to update themselves via yum. eg, you install a package from a 3rd party and it installs a .repo file that keeps the package(s) up-to-date. On the other hand what makes yum 2.2 much more efficient than yum 2.0 is it's use of meta-data. Instead of downloading all the headers for the packages in a repository instead it just downloads the meta-data which is a gzip compressed xml file that provides much of the information that yum needs to work out dependencies etc. Yum 2.0 still downloads header (.hdr) files when it does an update/install but it doesn't need to download all of them anymore. It only downloads the headers for the packages it is installing/upgrading.
Perhaps this discussion could be held at http://www.wlug.org.nz/SelectingADistribution which needs an overhaul. We could also perhaps have a list of the top 10 things that are different in each distro (ie how to get security updates, how to get MP3 playback, how to configure your network card). Giving up on the list isn't a good way to stop other people from having problems.
An interesting exercise may be to actually use different distros and do a comparison. Something for a LUG meeting perhaps? People could select a distro they have never used before and do a presentation on what they liked/disliked in the install and configure process. I briefly played with SuSE 9.1 on my new laptop via a Live CD version I got off one of the members of this LUG. It was interesting just having that brief look. I'm sure doing a more in depth comparison/investigation would be enlightening. You may even find that the distro you know and love now isn't necessarily the best fit for you. Regards -- Oliver Jones <oliver(a)deeper.co.nz> Deeper Design Limited