Aren't linear-pull a little easier to, well, pull? Santa Rita Road, a road near here, climbs to the top of a mountain ridge. It's a nice climb that I've done many times. On my old Stumpjumper with cantilevers, coming back down was painful on my hands. It's all downhill and you spend much of your time on the brakes to keep from going too fast around gravelly, blind corners. My hands used to ache by the time I got to the bottom.

I rode up it this weekend on my new (to me) Rockhopper with linear-pull brakes. I experienced none of the pain or aching on the way down. This was just a one-time sample, but I was happy with the performance of the linear-pulls compared to my old cantis.