The release Thursday of OpenSUSE 11.1 RC 'incited' me to download the KDE-based Open CD version and give it a spin. I've been tracking KDE 4.1 across three distributions (Mandriva 2009, Fedora 10, and OpenSUSE). I tried Kubuntu 8.10 and immediately rebooted my system and threw the CD in the trash. Kubuntu in any version is one of the worst ways to experience KDE (version 3 or version 4).

Although I don't have any images of the boot process (and I never had) I can say that booting into OpenSUSE 11.1 is a smooth and polished experience. This is in stark contrast to booting into a current release of Ubuntu, in which the language selection menu is clumsily splashed across the screen. The Ubuntu first boot experience is crude and amateurish, while OpenSUSE (and Mandriva and Fedora and ... ) are far more polished and professional. The only first boot experience worse than Ubuntu is OpenSolaris and its several text menus.