I think it's a great review. My only quibble is with your recommendation of Ubuntu on the basis of usability. I've been using Kubuntu since 5.04; I know that's not the same, of course, as Ubuntu, but it's close. At any rate, I've spent considerable time on the Ubuntu forums these last few years.

I don't think Ubuntu is as usable as it should be. Usability is always difficult to judge for those of us who have used Linux for a long time, but there are certain basics that I believe must be present in order to make the usability claim. Among these are wireless networking capability, which I know that you don't evaluate, but which is nevertheless essential in a world of laptop users (which is becoming more common than desktop users in terms of new PC purchases).

Ubuntu fails to deliver usability with several wireless cards. It also fails on ATI video cards. I don't mean that you can't get these things to work, but that they are difficult and often require sophisticated user intervention.

Anyhow, I don't know which distro is the king of usability. Believe it or not, Puppy may qualify, because their setup wizards are clear and painless. But I just don't think it's Ubuntu.