Mandriva 2009 Spring Released 96
Frederik writes "Mandriva just released the 2009 Spring version of its distribution. Highlights of this new version include vastly improved boot times thanks to Speedboot, KDE 4.2.2, GNOME 2.26.1, XFCE 4.6 and LXDE desktop environments, a completely rewritten Mandriva Security Centre and improved firewall and network configuration tools, OLPC Sugar environment, QT Creator development environment, Songbird audio player, ext4 support and many more. Check out the release tour and release notes for more information or immediately start downloading it."
Re:Mandrive versus Ubuntu (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mandrive versus Ubuntu (Score:3, Informative)
Mandriva's Control Center is way ahead of Ubuntu, and Mandriva does a much better job of working from install -- no further twiddling required.
But that's it. They've both very good distros. If you like Ubuntu, by all means do stay with Ubuntu. Mandriva's simply done a better job of being the distro you can hand to a neophyte and walk away. With Ubuntu you still have to twiddle for a couple of evenings, in my experience.
YMMY due to hardware variations, and I have not upgraded to Jaunty yet.
Re:Mandrive versus Ubuntu (Score:3, Informative)
This doesn't really answer the question.
RPM Vs. Dev, and all, is under the hood stuff that is almost certainly already known by the person asking, since (s)he states previous use of Mandrake. An important difference would be something like msec, the Mandriva Security Center, which has no good equivalent in *buntu AFAIK. I don't know what "optimized for GNOME" is supposed to mean, but Ubuntu comes in the GNOME flavor (default Ubuntu), the KDE flavor (Kubuntu), and the XFCE flavor (Xubuntu) that I know of. LXDE is also in there, but I don't know if there is a seperate version for that or not.
WRT the root account, *buntu does have a root account, The root password is just disabled, so if you want to become root you have to use sudo su, but the root account is there if you want it. I sometimes use it. I haven't bothered to see a root password, but it can be done. Discouraged? Yeah, but so what? It's probably a good idea for many inexperienced users, and even experienced ones. More than a few of us have executed a command as root that we really shouldn't have, then said "Oh, crap!" as we realized it :)
Re:Mandriva is still a great distro. (Score:4, Informative)
Mandriva is, IMHO, the most flexible Linux Distribution available;
Not to be rude, but there's this thing called Gentoo...
Re:You keep using that word... (Score:1, Informative)
From wikiepedia:
Implementation is the realization of an application, or execution of a plan, idea, model, design, specification, standard, algorithm, or policy.
I'm pretty sure that an.echte.trilingue's use of the word is correct. Thanks.
Re:XFCE? (Score:2, Informative)
Mandriva One isos have only one DE (KDE or Gnome)
Re:XFCE? (Score:2, Informative)
Download the "Mandriva Free DVD" not the "Mandriva ONE KDE" or "Mandriva ONE GNOME"
The ONE editions are LIVE CDs that you can install from if you really need to.
The free DVD edition contains MUCH more software, but more importantly, it contains the REAL Mandriva installer program, that lets you chose anything you want or need.
It will handle what you wanted, either by selection XFCE and the Gnome apps you want, or just select both and after your first boot, just select XFCE at the log-in screen and it will default to it the next time.
I usually install all of the desktops, so that I can try out the others.
After you go online and go to add software, it will set up the repositories you need to download almost anything you could want, including a LOT of different desktop environments, like Enlightenment, IceWM, and almost any other you might want.
The really nice thing about Mandriva is that when you add a program, it shows up in the menus of almost all of the different desktops, so you do not have to set each one up separately.
Re:Mandrive versus Ubuntu (Score:3, Informative)
All of Mandriva's system utilities use GTK.
I've been using Gnome on Mandriva for years, so apparently their support for both environments is acceptable.
Re:Mandrive versus Ubuntu (Score:3, Informative)
Kubuntu is not great. It's basically the vanilla KDE packages with a couple of basic QT apps thrown on top; the real love, and bulk of development, goes into the ubuntu GNOME side, and GTK apps for everything ubuntu specific.
I haven't tried mandriva lately, but they've always been a KDE-lovin' distro with all the management utils etc written in QT. From a quick browse round their site, they still look like the emphasis for distro custom apps being in QT.
Re:Mandrive versus Ubuntu (Score:1, Informative)
When I ran Mandriva (yes, I'm another Ubuntu traitor) the management utils were written in perl + GTK.