I'm not trying to start a distro war here - so all chill :)

I've been using Mandrake for the last 2 years and have been very
impressed with the install and UI. I think it's a great distro to give
to friends new to linux. There are some exciting this going these
days...

If you like Mandrake try PC Linux OS based on Mandrake 9.2
(http://www.pclinuxonline.com/pclos/)
It's in it preview 5 version now but I've been using the p4 version and
it's very polished and well done by texstar  (who had one of the best
urpmi repos in the world)

texstar used the makecd project (http://livecd.berlios.de/) which is
very cool in and of itself.