2009 was a big year in Linux world. With Fedora finally getting rid of its installation issues and Ubuntu giving its user a taste of cloud computing on ubuntuone, the year turned out to be awesome for Linux fans. Here I present before you the review of my four favorite distors, namely Fedora 12, Ubuntu 9.10, openSUSE 11.2 and Mandriva 2010.

• Fedora 12 : This release was code named Constantine. Fedora development team really worked hard for this release. After experiencing the installation problems in previous release most of the users decided to move away from the distro but Fedora 12, packed with the much needed Anaconda (the Fedora installer) patches, did the installation very smoothly. Fedora 12 has a better power management system, performance optimizations, new virtualization enhancements, and a lot more. Although touchpad is still disabled by default, I always wonder why. This distro also highlights one of the most annoying feature of GNOME file manager, every folder opens in a new window. Think about a file kept in 5 subfolder, you’ll be half dead by the time you reach there.
  
  The best feature of this distro, according to me, is its ease of encryption. Fedora has made disk encryption a piece of cake. Fedora 12 also come with a better hardware compatibility. Firefox comes as the only Internet browser but without java support and to make things worse, java package is not present in default repository. Of course you can add RPM Fusion Repo anytime.
• Ubuntu 9.10 : The most user friendly Linux distro ever seen by mankind. Thats is what I will say about Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala. You will be quite familiar with the desktop. But you will miss the “Add/Remove Software” which is now replaced by “Ubuntu Software Center”. This sure made GUI more impressive and the job for newbie more easy and interesting. Ubuntu Software Center has a bigger role to play in future. Canonical has set the goal of developers being able to sell their own commercial software from within the Software Center by the Ubuntu 10.10 release.
  
  I also liked the small envelope icon at the right of the top panel. The idea of keeping emapthy and evolution at single click is great. Also Computer Janitor in System>Administration menu is great for cleaning up old files and recovering some space. And last but not the least… the boot time is insanely fast!
• openSUSE 11.2 :
  I don’t know but some how this distro always looks more beautiful to me than its previous release. This release comes with a crisp n clean, green looks. I like the set of options presented on desktop. Firefox, Computer and Office are the things which every guy uses. Quite similar to Mandriva the control panel is very carefully designed to cater the needs of the user.
  
  The software management tool has improved greatly. I like the way it gives you all the information in a single window: a list of impending changes in the right panel, categories and search results to the left. Can’t ask for more. Just like Fedora you might need to add additional repositories like that of packman. Additional information about adding the repositories can be found here.
• Mandriva 2010 :
  
  Mandriva is my personal favorite. This distro consist of the most powerful and yet insanely simple control panel a Linux can ever have. Although it has a bit slow installation process but its totally worth it. Another thing worth mentioning is that the developers have kept Gnome and KDE flavors as similar as possible. Control Center is modified again, for good.  The Hardware section shows a list of detected hardware, from which the user can easily see information about the hardware, tweak driver options, or configure things like video settings. The icons in menus are very well organized to cater newbies. There are plenty of applications included that will fit the majority of user’s needs.