please compare ubunt 7.10 and mandriva 2008 spring

I think a fairer comparison would be 8.04 and Spring. Spring is definitely ahead of 7.10, but 8.04 has probably got loads more features than 7.10.

Those of us who like Mandriva will sing Mandriva's praises and the Ubuntu people will recommend Ubuntu.

One thing to note is that Mandriva can be configured as KDE or Gnome where are Ubuntu is Gnome. You'll have to use Kubuntu for KDE and I think 8.04 does not have long term KDE support.

The thing is they're both fine distributions and it comes down to personal taste.

If you are looking to choose between the two, then the best solution in my opinion would be to try them both and make your own decision as to which you prefer.

Yep, I agree. And since you can download both live cd's (which I've done) and test them first before installing it's a good choice. Though I ended up sticking with Debian and just went to testing and it gave me what KUbuntu 8.04 had. See my post in the Debian forum.

If you are coming from windows then Mandriva wins hands down, if only on aesthetics. People rave about Ubuntu, and it is the most popular from of Linux, butit has quirks that are different from most Linux, namely the password arrangement.It is handy, however, if you want to dual boot with windoze, not that you could n't do it with mandriva 8 and later.The centralised arrangement of mandriva's 'control' features are a big bonus and unlike windows (2000) they actualy work. As an easy to use swap with windows then it has to be mandriva for me but then many would say I'm whistling through my fundament.

fred