• smackdown, noun (1990)
1.     a severe beating or defeat; a decisive setback
2.     a bitter contest; confrontation
Source: the so-called "Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.6), Copyright © 2003-2005 Lexico Publishing Group, LLC", unavailable in print (actually, the online contents of dictionary.com in the rare cases when it doesn't come from AHD4 or other printed dictionaries).

TUX Magazine , Issue #12, April 2006 (download it here) dedicates almost half of the issue (pages 17 to 41) to a "Distribution Smackdown". Facing Debian, Linspire, SuSE 10, Fedora Core 5, Ubuntu/Kubuntu and MEPIS, Mandriva gets the highest rating and the "EDITORS' CHOICE". While I am happy for Mandriva for this award, the way the "contest" was run puts serious question over:

• objectivity of the reviewers
• pertinency of some criteria
• accuracy of the judgment

The overall results of the smackdown were as follows:

Distro	Reviewed By	Overall Rating
Debian	Colin McGregor, Toronto	3.2—Middleweight
Linspire	John Reep, “chief pilot, harmless eccentric and traditionalist raconteur"	4.0—Junior Heavyweight
SuSE 10.0	Jess Hall, KDE Developer, NZ	4.0—Junior Heavyweight
FC 5	Dee-Ann LeBlanc	4.1—Junior Heavyweight
Ubuntu/Kubuntu	Brian Jones	4.2—Junior Heavyweight
MEPIS	Roy Brander, Calgary	4.4—Junior Heavyweight
Mandriva	Evan Leibovitch, Toronto	4.7—Heavyweight

What's wrong in here? Almost nothing, it's just... each distro is reviewed by a different person! For a balanced and a more objective result, each and every reviewer should have rated each distro -- which was not the case, I'm afraid.

Now about a very sensitive criteria: Multimedia capabilities.

The judges decided this way:

• 1/5 for Debian and Ubuntu/Kubuntu;
• 2/5 for Linspire and SuSE;
• 3/5 for FC5;
• 5/5 for MEPIS;
• 5+ for Mandriva ('cause it's the winner, what else is the "+" for?)

Regardless of what Jes Hall is saying on page 18: « Having to track down and install codecs yourself for obscure ideological reasons can be, quite frankly, a pain in the backside. », this is not the case.

You know, honey, "ideological reasons" are there where Fedora Core doesn't want to support NTFS -- but this is not multimedia. When a distro supported by a business (not by a single guy, like for MEPIS) does not include support for MP3 files, or for AVI files, or for libdvdcss, this is not for "obscure ideological reasons" -- it's because of the law, dammit!

Warren Woodford may not give a damned... whatever about the fact that you should pay for distributing any support for playing MP3 (and he pays not). And Microsoft formats are proprietary -- Linspire payed for that! And DVD decoding is illegal in many countries!

So, if a one-man-distro doesn't care for that, fine. But this is not a sustainable business model. All the business-backed free distros can not follow the same path!

If you're not satisfied with that, go and say this to the people you voted for -- if you still believe you really have a word to say in this pretended democratic world (you don't have any word, and this is THEY who decide what is "patentable" and what can be considered "private property" -- and this includes file formats, yep).

Dee-Ann LeBlanc seems to be the only one having the proper understanding of the matter when she reviews Fedora Core 5: "for legal reasons, many of the most popular audio and video formats, such as MP3, QuickTime, Windows Media and Real Player can’t play by default."

Moreover, there is no distinction made between the free and non-free distros!

• Mandriva has a commercial and a free distro -- which one was considered and which one receives a 5/5 in the Multimedia? (The answer is obvious.)
• All the reviewed distros are receiving a 5/5 for the Price, even if there are major differences:
  • Debian, Ubuntu/Kubuntu, FC5 and MEPIS are completely free;
  • SuSE may be free or not free, but it's basically free now;
  • Mandriva may be free or not free, but here you should strongly consider the commercial version; the Free one couldn't possibly get a 5/5 in the Multimedia!
  • Linspire is ALWAYS FOR MONEY ($49.95 for the download edition, plus $19.95/yr for Click-N-Run).
  How in the known world are all rated the same in the Price department? (Yes, TUX Magazine sucks for that one!)

Overall, the face-to-face review (with different referees) in the latest TUX Magazine is nice. And positive. But not quite professional.

A few of the unexpected tids and bits I've read in the reviews:

• The quintessence of upgrading in Debian (and derivatives, Colin failed to say):
  su
  apt-get update
  apt-get upgrade
  exit
  and:
  su
  apt-get -u dist-upgrade
  exit
• "Even the RTL8180L wireless card in the ThinkPad was identified correctly and a driver provided." That was in SuSE 10.
• "In all, using Mandriva is as comfortable and satisfying as sipping a café au lait on the Champs Elysee. C’est un vrai plaisir!"

Un plaisir qui coûte, pour le 5/5 en Multimédia, 79.90 EUR (Mandriva Linux 2006 Powerpack). Eh oui.

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