Drivers, Drivers, Drivers

Seem the issues with distros are actually mostly issues with drivers (kernel + X).

1) Hardware device X not detected/working at all
   - Whatever distro has the latest Kernel + X will win here. Some distros might workaround by
bundling out-of-tree drivers (usually with the expense of stability/quality).

2) Suspend not working
   - So the kernel/X driver is buggy.

3) Hardware working partially (external displays, hardware hot keys..)
   - There is some integration that might be necessary to do here for the distro, but with
recent kernels, HAL, etc, It's again just up to who is freshest.

4) power consumption

   - Distros can spoil this by bundling and starting lots of polling software, so "bare"
distros have a advantage here. But again, drivers are important here. On my X40, enabling DRI
made X the top wakeup source (After that, network-manager - wtf?)...

Generally timing of this review dictates who will "win" - IE what distro happens to in a
release cycle moment allowing them to have the freshest kernel of the bunch. That is assuming
the kernel / X hasn't suffered from regressions, which isn't taken for granted. For example
the new RandR stuff broke many X setups with multiple different display adapters. 

So distributions can mostly compete here by a) contributing driver fixes b) streamlining the
process of getting latest upstreams included (while managing to avoid regressions).

The importance of high-quality drivers seems way underestimated.