For those of you that keep an eye on
DistroWatch, you may have noticed a "new" distro knocking Ubuntu off it's throne...
PCLinuxOS.
PCLinuxOS has been around since 2003. It was originally based on the Mandriva distribution. Mandriva was the first distro to really focus on easy installation and a great desktop experience out-of-the-box (I remember really despising the distro when it first came out...a bastardization of my, then, beloved Red Hat).

I doubt PCLOS is going to dethrone Ubuntu as MY desktop distro of choice anytime soon...but it is nice to see some more, polished distros out there.