Mandriva launched the new 2008 Spring version (or 2008.1) around April 9th 2008 and just 2 weeks later around April 24th Ubuntu 8.04 LTS was out clogging the internet pipes in a download frenzy Needless to say - I have tested both final versions on a number of computers.

I will start with the good part - Mandriva 2008.1 got slightly better than the previous version with the new 2.6.24 kernel and the entire color theme and user interface remains very good, polished and usable - which probably make Mandriva one of the best distributions around if you want both KDE and GNOME.

In a rather similar way Ubuntu 8.04 has integrated the newer 2.6.24 kernel and all the latest sofware and has also done a number of small usability improvements - for instance for a newcomer from Windows WUBI might a nice way to take a first look at Linux.

Unfortunately here is where the constructive criticism must start