No intention to flame. But I can't help but giving my 2 cents here.
pdaXrom rocks, but ...
It is not a normal way to maintain a healthy distro by getting the devs involved in all the jobs: building+patching the kernel & system, packaging, writing guides, answering questions, project management, etc.
Again patching and doing cottage-industry-style of packaging can be a very exhausting and frustrating job.
pdaXii is indeed a wonderful project. I'd say it is perhaps the greatest accomplishment and the most refined homemade distro for Z. But almost all the work is done and maintained by Meanie himself. I am NOT saying that Meanie is not the man. If he is not I really don't know who is.
But still there are some inherent limitations: it must be a very dedicated mission if one is determined to build the system, maintain the packages/feeds and write documentation all on his own, while keeping the whole thing constantly up-to-date. In a word, it's a question of "sustainable development".
After all pdaX is a very good hacker's project, but what it needs so badly are smooth coordination, team work, more regular release plan (w/o so many long or short intermittence stranding many loyal users' hopes) and *standard* distro management, especially because of the comparatively large user base in the Z community and the developers are aiming so high.
pdaXrom works, even for r198, but it demands for a lot of concentration and effort, and considerable *nix knowledge and hacking skills.
The versioning also looks a bit daunting: beta1, beta3, beta4, rXYZ, pdaXii, pdaXiiv2 ... and what have you
Angstrom really "looks good", but ...
many things simply do not work. The huge number of packages (around 10k of them) is just an illusion, because: 1) most package are split into tons of subpackages; 2) many useful packages are built but broken. Plus the devs keep forcing users to use its bugtracker, which is a mental blow to ordinary users, without much response to user's request, detailed documentation, how-tos and tutorials. Not everyone in the world buys the how-to-ask-the-smart-question philosophy, especially when it comes to new/inexperienced *nix users (who far outnumber the seasoned hackers). Having everyone read everything right from the start is a big waste of time and resource and so is a very counterproductive holy quest. So even though Angstrom has very good potentials, the OE mindset tends to confine it to be a merely developer's system.
OpenBSD would be the rising star, thanks to its real *standard* status: the completeness of the system (perfect toolchain being part of the system itself), the ports system and the top class documentation system beat all homemade distros hands down, but ...
what leaves to be desired are: 1) Speed (seems not in Theo's priority); 2) SD write (it is a MUST!); 3) Bluetooth; 4) A proper package repository for Z (which some ppl including me have been trying to do over the last few months)
With all these three matters fixed, OpenBSD and Debian will go neck to neck in the distro race.
Debian (titchy linux) ... it blows my mind! Beside OpenBSD it is another authentic distro experience on Z. It feels just as solid as Debian on desktop, but does not compromise much in performance (iceweasel can run in 30 seconds!). The holy grails of standard package repositories and documentation can also be found in this distro. Remember Debian is a great saviour to many poor little souls including the good old HPCs such as the Jornada. So why not Z (who is also getting a bit "old" now)?
