Beryl is set up beautifully on PClinuxOS and it really does work great right out of the box not to mention the distro is very polished graphically i agree with that but Ubuntu Studio theme + one of Sash original wallpapers still kicks ass for me !
Compiz Fusion has been working for me i guess i am lucky in that regard(knock on wood). Have you tried it ? You had any problems getting it to work ? For me it was an easy install no problems at all so it's pretty stable on this end(nvidia end hihi).
It's like you said it all comes down to personal preference i happen to prefer Ubuntu + Compiz Fusion and you prefer PClinuxOS + Beryl.
Your video card drivers don't work well in Ubuntu and my sound card doesn't work at all in PClinuxOS or any other distro built on Mandriva. This is how it is with linux , one distro will work as charm on a particular configuration while on another it will be hell.
For my old Barton machine Ubuntu works best, PClinuxOS works but without sound sad to say.
But i guess the thing that bothers me the most with PClinuxOS is the lack of autoupdate of packages and poor documentation(compared to Ubuntu's that is). PClinuxOS does come with many more things installed by default than Ubuntu but for an average guy who only needs the computer for browsing the web, emailing and writting documents Ubuntu default set of programs is enough. The only thing missing perhaps are the multimedia codecs but those can be installed very easy trough Totem player. AMD/Nvidia drivers can be enabled with one click trough option in GUI however they are not the newest so for some newer cards you might need to download newer ones from the repositories. That is pretty simple as well, both in Ubuntu and PClinuxOS. Configurability wise KDE is light years ahead though. In Gnome you have to manually configure alot of stuff from the console where as in KDE there is a GUI option for almost everything and the menus seem familiar to windows . So Kubuntu or PClinuxOS might be a a better choice for windows users. Personally i don't mind doing things from the console but some people avoid it like the devil since they are used to doing everything from GUI's. I guess it all depends on the users needs and requirements so saying that in general one distro is easier/better to use than the other is impossible. I will say that some things are easier/better done in Ubuntu and some in PClinuxOS both are fantastic distro's very user friendly and leave it at that.
I forgot to mention another rising star distro based on Ubuntu with pretty good looks, included proprietary drivers for AMD/Nvidia, closed source multimedia codecs and Beryl for all of you that want these things installed by default like Sasha does. It's called
Linux Mint. Been trying to decide for this over Ubuntu and i might go for it ...
Vista has been running on my system since January, the only change I did to hardware was upgrade to 2GB RAM, as 1GB is way to little. But I do like it especially the security aspects. IE7 runs in a limited user mode as does the rest of the system. OK I do get UAC security alerts but they are not a problem they add maybe one second to installing/running a programme. At least I know that if any bad boy tries to run I will know and be able to deal with it . The stability is great as with XP I was reinstalling an image backup every few months ( I do like playing) but on Vista I still have the original install after seven months
Then i envy you as i had to reinstall 3 times already and i've been using it for only a month. At first everything seem to be working fine as i reported here but these last few days i've been having some strange stability problems + serious stuttering in games and i've been pulling out my hair on what's wrong. At first i thought it was hardware related probably overheating or something so i ended up opening my comp , pulling out basically every cable every card cleaned the whole bunch put it back in rechecked everything was properly seated and connected i lowered the OC, re-set all the BIOS options but the problems were still there so, i did another Vista reinstall and now it seems to be working again. I still don't know what fixed it though. Perhaps it could be the drivers as i think i got hold of some newer ones for my chipset and graphics card. I sure hope it will work now as i'm getting tired of setting everything up over and over.