Does the PackageManager 'make' a distro?

I've noticed that (aside from RPM hell a few years ago) major distros have a better package manager than the other ones. This ease of installing new packages seems to make a distro more popular more so than any other feature (since so much is cross-compatable).

I've recently installed arch, but have been having difficulty getting firefox3 installed from the community repository, some of the links don't work and i know that affects it, but FF3 has been out a while, and should be accessible. Then I have a hard time searching for programs to install. I know there supposed to be a program to help but i can't find it to get it instaled, and ABD/AUR are not helpful. This makes me not want to continue using Arch.

I have to comapre it to ubuntu, in that i can use the auto-completion to install packages, which make me fat and lazy. I seem to recall being able to do auto-completion in gentoo also (but it's been a few months so i could be wrong)

Sabayon i liked, but the packagemanager was extremely unorganized, which again made me not want to use it. With sabayon they had files organized, but there were 4-5 different sections for similar programs, which made it annoying to search.

Does anyone else feel this way or am I just overly spoined by apt-get and completion?

I am partial to Aptitude based distros. Why I lean towards Debian and Ubuntu. Though both are sort of the one in the same. Being Ubuntu is based off of testing or unstable Debian. Like Saybayon is based off Gentoo.

The repos are what makes it and being able to connect to it properly.. Not the package manager per se. If Pacman has a good repo backing it. It can be just as powerful as Portage or Aptitude, more so under the right fingers.. Since your apt-getting or emerging. In the concept of Arch.. Your pacman -S'ing.
Not bieng able to weld the package manager fully with the bianaries/source. It is going to make it seem weak and dull. Like a 9 pound hammer, with nothing to hit.

Aptitude or Synaptic (Debian) having that visually browsable list makes it easier to dink around. Or find other repos to connect to if you need. Popular distros do have an advantage of repos 'o plenty. Ubuntu comes to mind.

The package manager is a very important difference between distros. Portage is one of the key defining features of Gentoo. It's not the only thing, but yeah, it's one of the major things that attracts people to a distro. The most annoying thing about Linux is working with a distro with poor package management. A good package manager is far easier than Windows or OSX for new software installation. A bad package manager is far harder.