I've just finished upgrading my sister's pc, which we use to share a dial-up connection, to Mandrake 9.1. ( Yes-dialup, I'm 2 miles from AOL's headquarters and the closest to broadband that I can get is wireless or satellite.) I can't say that the install was a piece of cake - the installer crashed on me a couple times until I ran it in advanced mode, and although I did an upgrade first I had to go back and do a complete install for the distribution. Upgrade pains aside, the KDE 3.1 desktop looks very nice and polished, and the system feels more resposive.

I don't understand this whole case-modding phenomenon