I have the need to try out a fedora core(to install sybase ASE) and have a chance to play with its package management system(both apt and yum), there is no comparison. It is slow, it is fragile(the dependency stuff) and searching for packages is a mess.

No wonder there are so many debian based distro as being a commuity based development, there is an implicit requirement that a debian package must sort out all kinds of weird way it may be installed.

Will try out gentoo soon and see how it scores.

BTW, anyone with a need to dual boot windows/linux should really give colinux a try. It is a perfect VM engine for linux if you must run windows. I have fedora 1, woody, sarge all running at the same time under XP. A great way to test out various flavor of *nix. The limitations are that don't expect games to run and it cannot access any hardware except network and HD.

One of the creative use of it is to have the powerful firewall of linux running under XP, if you don't have a dedicated router/firewall.