As I come to the end of my Live CD evaluations, (Yours left today Oliver, sorry it took so long) I have found myself asking a really interesting question of what makes a good desktop. Naturally the best answer is "one that does what the user wants it to do." the problem is what does the average desktop user want to do ? In a sort of applied way, I used to sell cellphones, and people would come in and ask for a good deal on a cellphone, and the traditional sales role was here is model on special for ... model B if you more features. I alway started with the question, what are you wanting to do with it who will be using it, and how many calls will it receive and make. then I cold tailor the best package for the user, I also sold the most car and truck phones (installed) of any rep, and had a strong business clientelle. They needed tools, not cheep phones. Later I would get people asking my advice on buying a laptop, my question was the same, what do you want to do with it, where do you plan to use it, is battery life or speed and graphics your goal. PC's are flexible tools, My father in law's pc is used for genealogy, writes document files, e-mail and Internet and plays solitaire. My wifes sister, surfs the net and uses chat software, while her son plays games and only games. My wife does spreadsheets, makes sewing graphics for her janome, so she users her scanner, downloads images/video her digital camera and firewire camcorder and makes movies with this, she also also creates musical soundtracks with live instruments, writes music scores and of course also uses it for e-mail and web surfing. of course it all need printing. I hack software (with permission of course) develop electronic circuits, generate code for Microcontrollers, write manuals, test software , re-write manuals keep track of work flow, run a bug track system, manage servers, mange remote systems by short life dial up connections. Update my ipaq and handle huge amounts of e-mail including tech support. A lot of printing, a little video and very really some scanning. Oh and I move around a lot , so I am wireless. My son plays games ...... oh yeah, he surfs the net to get patches for his games too ......... Nah thats it he plays Games. So what is an average user ??? ..... Maybe someone who can use and average desktop. Circular logic ??? Maybe thats why there is so much of a problem with deciding on a desktop distro. so here is my take based on a newbie with a first PC. E-Mail with an easy to set up pop client Web Browser with Flash, shockwave and Java either installed, or easy to do so. Document writer that can output a word document (possibly powerpoint if you are a student... they always ask for this) IM Client AOL and MSN IRC software P2P software, (I hate it ...but lets be real) Easy to setup dial up to an isp or Basic adsl options. (get a router ... Grrrrr ) Printer support Basic games (solitaire) Digital Camera support Play Music CD's Play MP3's An easy to use volume control. The ability to find and install software that suits their interests .. E.G genealogy software, and preferably with a description of what the software will do. Access to help and/or support forums that are easy to use. A Simple guide to getting started. An Instruction Manual .. so they can loose it before anyone reads it. Let me know if I missed anything obvious that would be a must have. but based on this, any of the distros commented on here would do this, and do it well. so at the end of the day it comes down to the user experience, and the general feel of the interface. Naturally Windows users will look for familiarity in the interface, Mac users aren't so fussy but have their own likes and dislikes. Linux users will just modify it to what they want. Boot time matters a little, as most users shut the machine down, and run it up when they want to use it, but the responsiveness of the desktop probably matters more, it should have a nice snappy feel. The biggest issue will be what happens when our newbie plugs his/her digital camera in, will it work? is it hard to use. Trust me .. command line will really cause an issue here. Then it will be adding some new software. I've already said what I plan to test so far, And I have added cobind to the mix as it seemed to be a suitable candidate for a fedora desktop. But its hard to come up with really objective test methodologies as I would have to know what an average user is ... and here we go again .... -- "Engineering is the art of modeling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyse so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance." Dr A R Dykes.