Gentoo Linux 2005.0

Well, not important to me, because I already have it on my hard drive. Gentoo is one of the less systems (besides Debian-based systems) which can easily be kept up-to-date via aome simply commands. None of the commercial distros is capable of keeping a system once installed up-to-date. Furthermore, the online repository of Gentoo packages is simply amazing. After having used SuSE, Debian and Mandrake, I have to admit that Gentoo is the perfect system for my desktop:

Easiest online updates

All packages in the repository are really up-to-date

The system is very well documented

Many things have to be configured manually, but OTOH, no GUI configuration frontend will mess your manually modified configuration files

Gentoo always tries to include important system changes like the new init scripting process (I do not know any other distro which has it included)

Disadvantage:

Time consuming, caused due to the fact that you have to compile all packages by yourself. Mozilla, OpenOffice.org and KDE will need many many hours to compile

See the release announcement for further information.