Mandriva Linux 2010 Is Finally Out 267
ennael writes "We finally did it. Mandriva Linux 2010 is out and comes with many improvements and innovations. We still go on supporting in the same level of integration GNOME 2.28 and KDE 4.3.2. Support for netbooks is improved as users can now easily test Moblin 2.0 environment. 'Smart desktop' coming from European research is now fully integrated and is the first real working semantic desktop. Mandriva Control Center also brings improvements in tools: a new netprofile management tool, a GUI for Tomoyo security framework, and parental control. A big thanks to our community, who worked hard and made this release possible."
Am I the only one who cares? (Score:2)
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Re:Am I the only one who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
It had a few questionable releases around the Mandrake/Mandriva switch, but it's very very good now. From what I've seen it's probably one of the best distros for KDE, better than Fedora and Kubuntu.
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I agree. Mandrake 10 and Mandriva 2006 were both complete crap - but everything that I've used before or after that has been excellent.
Re:Am I the only one who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
Mandriva has been my OS of choice since it was Mandrake. I haven't tried Ubantu, hated Fedora (but haven't tried it for a long, long time). Suse was ok but I far prefer Mandriva to any distro I've tried.
I think what I like best about it is the "Mandriva Control Center", they tout it as new, but administration has been easy as pie for years anyway. It just works (at least on hardware I've thrown it on).
I'm leery of the "Smart desktop" technology; if I don't like it I hope it's easy to remove or disable. It's GNU so it probably is, and who knows, I might like it anyway! TFA was really light on details, can anybody here shed more light on what it is, what it does, and how it works?
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Being a tester for 2010.0 there are still things broken but were not really looked into properly / at all by some developers.
However my biggest gripe is what people will think when on updating they will find their favourite KDE3 applications vanish, and only KDE4 in it's place (if the applications were even ported). It might be all fine for some people, but applications like Amarok2 and Kaffeine1 are real dogs in KDE4 versions, with plenty features completely missing compared to KDE3 versions, and horrible
Re:Am I the only one who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
No I also like Mandriva. Here's to hoping Mandriva 2010 undoes some of the damage caused to the Linux image by the Ubuntu Karmic release SNAFU.
I wouldn't mind seeing Mandriva gain some ground, and some new packages in the process.
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Here's to hoping Mandriva 2010 undoes some of the damage caused to the Linux image by the Ubuntu Karmic release SNAFU.
Everyone keeps saying that, but... for my home I upgraded a dozen total Ubuntu installs including desktop machines, laptops, virtual machines, file and database servers, MythBuntu frontends and backends... and encountered absolutely no issues. :/ The first I heard of any upgrade problems at all was on Slashdot.
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Seems like even if only 10 people had issues, most mindless dotters would jump on it. What is the big deal with wanting to slag off Ubuntu? I really don't have any problems with not having to edit config files just to get my basic system set up. I don't have problems with editing config files either, I work as a programmer, and I enjoy highly configurable systems. Ubuntu is still much more configurable than Windows or OSX. I don't see what other things need to be configurable that I couldn't change if I wan
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+1; tried to install it yesterday, not a snow ball's chance in hell to get the fucker booting without configuring grub myself. This could possibly be related to installing it on an mdraid root in a box with some 22 SATA devices spread over five controllers, making the root (hdN,M) quite difficult to predict with varying drivers between pre-boot grub and post-boot config environment. :]
Fortunately one can fiddle with anything and everything; works like a charm until the next update breaks everything
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A shame Ubuntu 9.10 looks absolutely awful out of the box. The icons look like the come from 4 different eras of desktop computing, folder decorators for Music/Pictures/Video etc look oddly childish and tacked on. The Software Center icon looks like a moldy cardboard box and the wallpaper is so bright it competes for the foreground.
Mark really does need to keep his fingers
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Now in 2004 and 2008, on which day did you turn it off? 29 Feb or 31 Dec?
Re:Am I the only one who cares? (Score:4, Funny)
> Am I the only one who cares?
There may be one or two others.
I learned long ago arguing over what Linux disto is best is like arguing about the best beer. Each one is unique and appeals to certain people. You have popular distos like Ubuntu and Red Hat/Fedora. Just like you have your popular beers like Budwiser and Coors. The users of the less popular distros usually look down on the users of the more popular distros. In the same way the drinkers of less popular beers look down on the drinkers of the more popular beers.
As for me, I'm typing this response into Chromium using Gnome that is running on Gentoo with special combination of USE flags that is optimized for my unique usage pattern of pr0n, Slashdot, EVE Online, TV/VCR repair, and database administration.
Also, thinking of beer made me get a Guinness out of the fridge before finishing this post.
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I know a lot of European girls who drink those brands!
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I learned long ago arguing over what Linux disto is best is like arguing about the best beer. Each one is unique and appeals to certain people.
Even moreso than with beer. My favorite beer is Killian's, but it costs too much and not many bars here carry it, so I usually just settle for Busch. With a Linux distro, price doesn't enter into the equation.
Some distros may work better on some hardware than others, some may lack features you need, if they lack features you don't need (but somebody else does) it's a
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I must know, how well is eve running in Gentoo? I tried a year or two ago and had problems running fullscreen or changing the windowed resolution. This was with wine (i'm guessing that's what you are using).
Re:Am I the only one who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
I do too; it makes it easy to do the kinds of things a home user wants to do, without insulting your intelligence, requiring crazy and arcane knowledge, or being overly pushy with the Free Software approach (they offer a F/OSS-only download, but they also offer an ISO with the useful free-as-in-beer proprietary stuff bundled). Their releases are more frequent than openSuse's, I've never had the instability problems that I get with Fedora (seriously, Fedora 10 crashes whenever I manage to connect it to my network, haven't bothered trying it again since then), and I massively prefer its design philosophy and UI over that of Ubuntu.
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They seem to be the only ones who are doing a really good job with KDE4.
Every other distro I've tried has made KDE4 feel like the steaming pile of poo that everyone said it was, but Mandriva made it feel like a really good desktop.
I don't know how they've done that when no-one else seems to be able to, but it does prove that in the hands of a good distributor, KDE4 is actually a very good piece of software. If only the Kubuntu or Suse guys could put in the kind of effort that the Mandriva team have obviousl
I think Mandriva is getting a raw deal from us. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been using Mandriva since the days of Mandrake ... 8.1 specifically ... and frankly each time I have tried switching to any other distro I always find myself coming back. Not that the other distros are bad, but I honestly think Mandriva has the hardware detection down cold, and has been routinely better than any others. When the 'buntu showed up I tried switching, and every iteration had a deal breaker. I stopped trying at the LTS edition. Today the only other distro I use is Zenwalk, not some mainstream hotshot like Suse, fedora or Ubuntu.
I guess I am asking, why is it that such a good, arguably superior, distro seems to have to pull teeth just to get a few scraps of publicity, while some others seem to be living in some sort of reality distortion field?
Re:I think Mandriva is getting a raw deal from us. (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess I am asking, why is it that such a good, arguably superior, distro seems to have to pull teeth just to get a few scraps of publicity, while some others seem to be living in some sort of reality distortion field?
It's the name. Ubuntu is fun to say. Gentoo is fun to say. Suse and Fedora are fun to say.
Mandriva is painful to say.
Re:I think Mandriva is getting a raw deal from us. (Score:5, Funny)
Mandriva sounds like a terminal skin condition...
"Hey, did you hear about Elaine? She has a bad case of Mandriva. Dr. Kubuntu prescribed her 500 milligrams of Debian, but he is not very optimistic about it"
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Manual Mod +1 Funny. Seriously, I think this is the funniest comment I've read all week!
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Mandriva sounds like a fruit.
Gee. That must be why products from a certain other fruity-named vendor [apple.com] are so unpopular.
Re:I think Mandriva is getting a raw deal from us. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've used Mandrake/Mandriva a couple of times too. Ironically enough a number of computer science peers jeered at it, calling it "n00b Linux".
You know, because we should all embrace distributions that are a pain to get working properly.
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The reason they jeer is because if it is easy to set up it doesn't teach you jack about how it works.
Bootstrapping a Gentoo install will teach you more about how operating systems and computer hardware work than any class you'll take at university.
Re:I think Mandriva is getting a raw deal from us. (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't speak for the rest of the world, but I can share my experience.
Back in 2001 or 2002 I bought a copy of Mandrake Linux. I had no Internet access (because I just moved) and I needed something for my new laptop, and I'd heard good things about Mandrake. I was sorely disappointed by it. It was heavy (taking a lot of disk space, memory and CPU time), and, apparently like every RPM-based distro at the time, had broken package management and bad quality packages (Mandrake managed to gain some fame for being unable to run Wine, for example).
I am sure Mandrake/Mandriva has improved since then, but it's been too late to keep me. I've discovered Debian, where time spent on system maintenance is minimal because its package management works, its packages work, they have a larger collection of packages than any other distro I've seen (meaning less time spent installing from source), and I feel safe upgrading my entire system in the expectation that everything will still work afterwards.
Even if Mandriva now provides all these things, that wouldn't compel me to switch, because I already have everything I care about.
I suspect it is the same way for others: either Mandriva doesn't offer compelling enough advantages over their current OS to make people want to switch, or people have had bad experiences in the past that make them want to avoid Mandriva. The fact that the project seems to have difficulty getting new releases out and the company behind it has been close to folding probably doesn't help, either.
(Just to be perfectly clear, none of this has anything to do with the technical quality of today's Mandriva. I am not saying it isn't an excellent product which deserves more attention. Just trying to explain why it isn't getting what it deserves.)
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I think the first and foremost answer to that is that people don't want complexity. When somebody new asks them what distro they should try out, the last thing you want to do is to answer "Try Mandriva or Ubuntu or Fedora or OpenSuse or....", you only confuse them by saying they have different strengths and weaknesses. It's like talking the details of spin and reach and weight of a racket to someone who needs to learn to hit the ball. Single straight answer: "Ubuntu". Not that it really had to be that distr
you only get a couple of chances (Score:2)
I remember trying it a long time ago and it didn't work right for me, so I never went back. It may have improved by now, but my current Linux distro works fine for me--why should I bother?
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Personally I loved the first few versions of Mandrake, but then it started to go south for me...
Each following version I found more bloated and had new weird half-baked configuration tools and broke more easily than the previous version. It was also much harder to find packages of more unusual software for Mandrake than Red Hat due to the smaller community.
At around version 8 I switched back to Red Hat, went from there to Ubuntu and haven't looked back since. To me Mandrake had become the distro that just t
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I've tried Mandrake in the past, and frankly, it used to suck. Every version had something that didn't quite work. I found RedHat to be much more stable & reliable. I've heard they've improved, but I see no reason to switch to them from Ubuntu.
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You ask a good question.
Because of the hype, I have tried Ubuntu many times and keep going back to Mandriva.
I use Ubuntu studio weekly but the polish is not there, and they don't fix bugs quickly.
And give up on using KDE with Ubuntu, it is almost like they try to give a bad experience to bring people back to gnome.
With Mandriva I can use any window manager, I even use ICE every once in a while when I want a light weight GUI.
-Finally- out? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mandriva and automakers run on Yearbuzz Saving Time.
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Whichever moron tagged this as "irrelevant"... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Mandriva is still the best desktop linux distro out there. Ubuntu is made of fail because it loves Gnomes.
The Ubuntu using moderators are really stretching, here. How exactly is this Offtopic?
Canonical are the collective village idiot of the entire FOSS community. Whichever members of the Lloyd Christmas demographic who use it and get mod points here, can mod it down as much as they want. They won't change the fact, and the fact is this:-
Ubuntu and Debian are both unmitigated garbage. I just installed Arch this morning. The install took three hours, and had none of the problems which I had constantly for s
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The Ubuntu using moderators are really stretching, here. How exactly is this Offtopic?
It maybe because there's no moderation tag for "annoying" that offtopic has been used as a substitute. Could anyone in good conscience really mod-up a post with so many uses of "fail" as a noun?
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I wouldn't describe Debian as unmitigated garbage - if you use it for a server you have no need of a flashy GUI or top-notch video and wireless support and it excels there. That is, after all, the core focus of Debian.
Ubuntu, OTOH - I can take it or leave it. I've spent the last two days wrestling with Ubuntu myself for a specific project and I'm just about ready to jack it in and run Mandriva.
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What is it you don't like about Debian?
I freely admit that it sometimes seems to be pushing a religion rather than an OS (Software must be free at all costs!!!111), and I have never tried it as a desktop OS.
But as a server OS, I can honestly say I have never experienced any major issue - certainly none that was attributable to the Debian people. The automated configuration tools it provides (or, to be more accurate, usually doesn't provide) are pretty lousy but I've used RedHat, Gentoo and Mandrake and IME
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I'm fed up with Ubuntu users. If it was just your obscenity of a distribution that was a problem, I could cope with simply not using it. That isn't my biggest issue, however. You insist on lying and engaging in denial about everything that is wrong with it, and suppressing complaint about said problems in any way you can. I know how this post is immediately headed for -1, and the reason given doesn't matter at all, does it?
Well fucking said! *applauds* Ubuntu users are the Scientologists of the OSS world.
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Or you could learn some statistics and see why an anecdote does not constitute universal data.
Face it, dear Troll, most people are using Ubuntu just fine just as most people are using Mandriva, Fedora and SuSE without problems. People with problematic hardware have long been a minority, and regardless of how angry you may be at being part of it, that won't make them a significant majority nor anyone who hasn't had a problem with it a "fanboy".
But don't worry, one day you'll grow up, get out of your momma's
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But don't worry, one day you'll grow up, get out of your momma's basement and be enlightened (in more ways than one) as you see the whole wide world open to you, filled with people who don't give a fuck about the problems you have with your computer. One day.
Ah, the other half of Slashdot's population have woken up. Morning. ;)
You know, one of my other posts in this thread was at 5, Insightful over night. It's the way it normally happens. My perspective resonates with the few other people here with a brain in their heads, for a couple of hours; and then in the morning there's the arrival of what I'll charitably refer to as, "the blue pill demographic."
Enjoy your 8-16 hours stuck in a 4 foot cubicle. I might even think of you at some point during the day; ri
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Ok, All fairly good points.
One of the main downsides to Debian is that it is expected you will do everything 'the Debian way', and if you don't, expect Debian to step on your toes.
I too came from a Slackware background, and you are right they are based off totally different systems.
I don't know if you ever plan to try Debian again (It sounds like you already found the solution(s) that work best for you, and that is plenty of reason to continue as you are)
I've had apt delete half a running system on two occa
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I think it comes from their ancestors. Debian always preferred Gnome.
Preferring Gnome over KDE is not a failure. It is only something that does not match your desktop environment requirements. Some people like Gnome. Although you might not like KDE either. I don't think that it fits your "rely on to install right, work properly and not throw up a fuss when it comes to installing software, playing music and getting things done" requirements.
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I haven't used Mandrake in a long time but i liked it a lot around 2000. But RPM hell drove me away from Redhat and Mandrake into the arms of Gentoo. I've been there ever since. People make fun of my lengthy install process.. but i still remember how painful those binary distro's were.
Doubt anyone is really interested in joining Gentoo these days though. There are some really good and easy to maintain distros out there like Mandriva. Unless you specifically want to build your OS from source, Ubuntu or
And expect Penguin Liberation Front uo update too (Score:5, Informative)
There is a wonderful location for software whose licenses make it difficult to include in Mandriva, such as libdvdcss for reading DVD's in the USA, emulators for game consoles because Mandriva won't incorporate them directly to avoid US DMCA legal issues, and Dan Bernstein's oddball tools whose licenses used to prevent rebundling. It's called the Penguin Liberation Front, it's built around Mandriva, and its source RPM's are convenient for any RPM based distro that wants access to these tools.
I find it extremely handy because it has old, weird tools like xv and vtwm for which I sadly miss development.
Is There a Joke? (Score:2)
Probably an old joke here - Mandriva ... makes me wonder if I should trust it more as a passenger, in contrast to Womandriva.
The sad fortune of distributions... (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember when, for a time, Mandrake was -the- Linux to get. Now look at them, practically off the radar.
A true diamond in the rough (Score:2)
My experience with Mandrake was probably three years or so ago now. It was right before the name change, if memory serves.
I had an old CD from a magazine cover from a few months before that; same old story. I needed an LFS host, and at the time was on 56k dialup, so downloading anything was out of the question. I was extremely ambivalent about using Mandrake, because at the time, it had the reputation as the resident "user friendly," distro; but as they say, any port in a storm. I closed my eyes, held m
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I started using Mandriva way back in the early mandrake days around 3.x something, and have always kept an eye on it over the years. The problem was not the concept, the problem was the execution. The company was flaky and poorly run, and it showed in the distro. They had a bankruptcy as I recall, the name change, management change, they tried to be a server company taking on red hat for a while, and the distros reflected it.
From one distro to the next it would go from well polished and working great, to a
Mandrake lived and died by RPM (Score:2)
Mandriva's not even run by the guy that founded Mandrake. So everyone that remembers the old Mandrake should remember that this is just somebody else with sorta the same name doing the distro now.
Re:Mandrake lived and died by RPM (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as Debian died by dpkg, in other words, not at all. I guess you didn't try urpmi (which was in a released version of Mandriva before apt was in a stable release of Debian)?
So, when no more founders of Microsoft are employed by Microsoft, they should change their name, or their customers should consider switching?
What really made Mandrake, and continues to make Mandriva, is not one person, but the combination of employees and contributors. While many of both have come and gone, a lot of the contributors from the Mandrake era still use and contribute to the distro, and new contributors join quite often.
If you bothered to look [zarb.org], you would probably find that Mandriva is more open than Ubuntu or Fedora (not sure about "Open"SUSE).
anyone installed it? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hoping for great things (Score:3, Interesting)
2009 Spring with the KDE4 desktop has given me an excellent experience on my Eee 701 with 2GB RAM (tried it with 512MB RAM, it was crashy and slow due to out-of-memory, though Mandriva includes a couple of lighter weight desktops which might be worth trying if you don't have KDE as a requirement!).
It works out-of-the-box on Eee 701 with the hardware well-supported without manual fiddling (a few magic function keys don't work, oh well). It looks nice, it's KDE implementation is nice and polished. It's like running a modern desktop OS, really excellent. My main objection is simply that it doesn't have a vanilla (x)nethack package :-(
I'm very excited to see 2010 and will upgrade to it after giving early adopters a chance to shake out any release bugs ;-)
Mandriva 2008 Spring was the best yet... (Score:3, Interesting)
the one thing that's really improved is kdenlive)
I tried to install Mandriva 2010, but aparently its installer doesn't think my SSD is a harddrive... although all previous mandriva versions installed on it just fine... maybe I'll switch the ports where my harddrives are plugged in - that may change something, but then again i'll have to reinstall grub manually (mandrivas bootloader repair tool never worked for me)
mandriva 2009 was completely unusable with kde 4.1... I think what I'll do soon is using mandriva-online to update my system (although I'd prefer a fresh installation) and if it goes bad, I'll switch back to 2008 Spring...
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2008.1 was indeed one of their best, most stable releases. The 2009 releases really have been waiting on KDE4 to catch up. 2009.1 is better than 2009.0, especially if you install everything from scratch, including fresh user directories to get rid of inappropriate KDE3.5 hangovers like old themes and konqueror instead of dolphin.
Im hoping the 2010 will have the KDE missing bits problem sorted out, and hopefully kuickshow makes a comeback, and dolphin becomes as nice a file manager as konqi is.
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instead I have LXDE now and I have f*cking 3 Programs in my menu. why tf were 800 MB installed? This is like damn small linux or windows 95! This shit shouldn't require more than 50 MB!
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kde 4 really kicked mandrivas usability... I currently use 2009 Spring and kde 4.3 is a big improvement over older kde 4 versions, but quite often I regret switching from 2008 Spring. many features, that worked in 2008 spring are now broken
I've been using kmail quite a bit, and haven't had problems. I don't use akregator much ...
kile and kate's scripting feature don't work anymore
I think it should be back in KDE 4.4, but this is of course an upstream issue.
kaffeine can't handle non-square pixels anymore, so DVD playback is stretched on my 16:9 TV - and my bugreports are just ignored)
i get errors from PulseAudio all the time
dragon player is working quite well for me on KDE 4.2 on Mandriva 2009.1. The only thing I am missing in dragon is a decent playlist.
I cant mount encrypted harddrives at boot-time, not even with initscripts or using crypttab (i have to mount them manually after booting
If this is your bug [mandriva.com], it may have workarounds for 2009.1, and is fixed in 2010.0 by the switch to plymouth (splashy was the cause in 2009.0 and 2009.1). If you have a different bug, you need to provide means to
Using mandriva since 2002 (Score:3, Interesting)
Currently about 40 server boxes, about dozen of workstations. Tried other distros many times since 2002, always switched back.
Good job, Mandriva guys!
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I used Mandrake for a couple of years before Mandriva lobotomized it.
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Re:How does it compare to Ubuntu? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How does it compare to Ubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not for those whose primary concern is an idealistic and uncompromising free OS though
Why not? They release a "Mandriva Free" ISO with every release, which contains only F/OSS software. You can install the proprietary stuff yourself if you want to, but the install media is about as "idealistic and uncompromising[ly] free" as any Debian GNU/Linux user could want.
Re:How does it compare to Ubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually they have a gratis version (One) and a commercial version (Powerpack); they're almost the same, but Powerpack includes some non-free software.
Re:How does it compare to Ubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
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Oops, I forgot to mention: they also have a version named "Free", that includes absolutely no proprietary apps or drivers.
Don't forget, adding non-free codecs and apps is as simple as adding the PLF repository from http://easyurpmi.zarb.org./ [easyurpmi.zarb.org]
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Mandriva doesn't cost 60 Euro, so please stop the FUD. You can get Mandriva running perfectly fine by using "Mandriva Free 2010", and they have community repos for mp3 etc just like Debian has "debian-multimedia" and Opensuse has packman.
"Ubuntu is an modern day white trash word that means 'I can't fucking read'".
\suseuser
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"Ubuntu is an modern day white trash word that means 'I can't fucking read'".
That's not what I've heard.
p.s. No, I didn't change my sig to fit the comment.
Re:How does it compare to Ubuntu? (Score:4, Interesting)
...considering Mandrivia costs 60 euros and has a MUCH smaller userbase than Ubuntu, which is free and is the de facto desktop distro winner. Shouldn't a linux newcomer just adopt the most supported distro aka Ubuntu?
Mandriva is free, too. Otherwise, you may be right. Ubuntu may be a better distro for a "Linux newcomer". On the other hand, getting support for other distros is not wildly different or inherently worse than getting support for Ubuntu. I hope you realize that Ubuntu might not be everybody's cup of tea, and not everybody is new to Linux. While Ubuntu may be the most popular choice for Linux on the desktop, it is by no means the only practical or best choice for everyone.
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I would actually advocate having a go at a few using VMWare or the likes. I worked my way through many major and a few minor distros that caught my fancy on Distro Watch [distrowatch.com] back when I was working nights doing tech support at a university using an old PIII-500. Ah those were the days *gets a little misty-eyed*. I can, however, honestly say that installing Gentoo was one of the most informative (and yes, frustrating) experiences of my early Linux days. If you want to learn how a system is structured I would
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Mandriva is a much better distro for the "Linux newcomer" IMHO. The install is nicer, the configuration ("Drake") tools are nicer.
Ubuntu is a larger more community based distro, that is its strength.
I like Ubuntu, but Mandriva is much faster at rooting out bugs in my experience. (I use Ubuntu Studio, and it has been years since I have had a RT kernel that worked. Can you imagine a kernel that will lock any AMD computer if the network is used... welcome to Ubuntu Studio. And they marked that bug "minor".
Re:How does it compare to Ubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
Mandriva has a free as in beer one CD (like Ubuntu) version: you pay for the version that comes as a multi CD set (so you can install more on installation without downloading) and support.
In any case, the cost of an OS is trivial compared to its importance to most users: if 60 Euros gives you something better, spend it.
If you think you should adopt the most widely used desktop, you should logically use Windows.
Mandriva is a very good distro, and much more newbie friendly. It has better hardware detection, and is very easy to use. The only real shortcoming is that the software installer is not quite as good as Synaptic.
Re:How does it compare to Ubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
Hardware support is good. My gut feeling has been it is better than in Ubuntu, but this is just personal experiences with some boxes that ran Mandriva but not Ubuntu, several years ago, and may not apply to latest versions of both.
Software versions in Mandriva are usually very fresh. It also seems to have better good 32 and 64 bit interoperability than most. I have been running the 64-bit version, yet I have not seen the 32-bit Flash troubles that users of other distros report. Just install the plugins and tell nspluginwrapper to update its information. I guess the fact that the author of nspluginwrapper used to work for Mandriva shows!
One good thing in favor of Mandriva is the PLF ("Penguin Liberation Front") repository that you can use to easily add software that the patent-encumbered in some parts of the world.
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Ubuntu does XFS, (as well as ext*, JFS, MurderFS and so on) through the standard installer. mdraid, lvm and truecrypt only work through the alternate installer disc (but the curses interface ain't that much more difficult than the GUI, so it oughtn't be an issue.
Re:How does it compare to Ubuntu? (Score:4, Informative)
Ubuntu does XFS, (as well as ext*, JFS, MurderFS and so on) through the standard installer.
XFS has been available on Mandrake/Mandriva since Mandrake 8.2 if I remember correctly. Since that time it has been possible for users to resize system filesystems (e.g. /usr) using a graphical interface. This is still not possible on many distributions.
mdraid, lvm and truecrypt only work through the alternate installer disc (but the curses interface ain't that much more difficult than the GUI, so it oughtn't be an issue.
The Mandriva installer supports RAID, LVM, and LUKS encryption [picpaste.com] in the graphical installer. This GUI tool is also available after installation.
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Mandriva is very easy to use, but also has all the power user features you can wish for easily available: by default there is a root account you can login to directly, unlike in Ubuntu. Installer supports more file system choices than most other distros (been running XFS at home for a long time).
I'd argue that linux newbies should better not have a root account they can log in to directly, and power users that _do_ need that so badly can probably figure out themselves that they only have to do 'sudo passwd root' once to enable root-logins in Ubuntu. Also I don't get your point about filesystems, last time I installed Ubuntu from scratch (8.04) I was able to pick tons of filesystems in the installer.
But don't get me wrong, you have a good point if you just meant to indicate that there's most likely
Re:How does it compare to Ubuntu? (Score:4, Interesting)
Umm... Mandriva is free. You *can* buy it boxed and get some support,etc., but for the average home user it doesn't cost a penny more than Ubuntu, Fedora, openSuse, or FreeDOS.
It's also still a fairly dominant distro, and in my opinion is a better place to start if you don't want your OS to treat you like a total moron (every time I try and use Ubuntu, it just feels like it's insulting my intelligence). Mind you, for some people that's probably the appropriate design for an OS, but I'm personally quite happy with Mandriva (one of my computers is running 2009 Spring, I may try upgrading it).
Re:How does it compare to Ubuntu? (Score:5, Interesting)
I still remember ordering Mandrake and Slackware CD's through the mail because they were too big to download on a 56k connection. For a few dollars any number of companies would burn disks as send them through the mail. It wasn't standard for everyone to have broadband, or to be able to do updates through the Internet. In retrospect, Linux was certainly clumsier, rougher, and less stable on the desktop. A quick spin with Mandrake Linux 7 can show you how radically the Linux desktop experience has changed in the last nine years.
This clumsy user experience was also responsible for turning many Linux geeks away from the "bloated" desktop environments and more toward bare metal distributions such as Slackware and Debian, along with minimalist window managers, xterms, and other such tools. In my case, after struggling with Red Hat and Mandrake, I found the simplicity of Slackware to actually be easier, and lived over in that world for the next 7-8 years until Ubuntu really started to shine. I am sure there are many other Slashdotters who have had similar experiences in their years with Linux.
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This sounds very much like my own experiences with Linux.I had a friend/co-worker help me setup a Debian system many years ago but, I never quite "got" Debian and it was very frustrating for me. I continued to run the Debian system for several years and I even tried out Corel Linux with similar results but, after reading about Mandrake(the name back then) I figured it couldn't be any worse so I gave that a try and WOW...all my hardware magically started working and it wasn't too hard for me to setup the sys
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Fedora was actually quite similar to Ubuntu by the time I switched. The Debian like packaging system kinda grew on me and the GNOME desktop from Ubuntu was better than the one from Fedora at that time.
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Ubuntu's shine also takes quite a bit of bloat... it's always fun cleaning up after the fact.
Re:How does it compare to Ubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
...considering Mandrivia costs 60 euros and has a MUCH smaller userbase than Ubuntu, which is free and is the de facto desktop distro winner. Shouldn't a linux newcomer just adopt the most supported distro aka Ubuntu?
Well, if said newcomer desires KDE, the answer is ABSOLUTELY NOT. Kubuntu, for the past 4 releases (basically, since Feisty) have been alpha quality. They ship with broken packages, zero customization, and bugs that would be considered by any other responsible vendor as showstopper (for instance, wireless that broke most people's Internet connection after updating to Jaunty). Besides, as other pointed out, Mandiva has free editions.
Re:How does it compare to Ubuntu? (Score:4, Interesting)
Out of curiosity, does kdesu (the graphical privilege-elevation dialog) work yet? The last Kubuntu build I tried had kdesu set up to use `su` not `sudo` (it's a configuration option). Since [K]Ubuntu's root account is disabled by default, it doesn't matter what password you enter - su won't work.
This was a blatantly obvious showstopper bug that requires literally a minute or two to fix. The fact that it shipped in a release version of Kubuntu was where I lost all faith in the distribution's QA efforts.
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Huh? I've been running it since 7.04/7.10 (part/fulltime) and never experienced what you're talking about. Normally I sudo from the command line but I'm quite sure I've used the graphic tool at least once per release.
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Hey man, blacklisting pcspkr rather than fixing a gnome-session bug is a definition of a quality distro! Don't insult teh Uboontoo!
You didn't want to use your hardware anyway.
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Out of curiosity, does kdesu (the graphical privilege-elevation dialog) work yet? The last Kubuntu build I tried had kdesu set up to use `su` not `sudo` (it's a configuration option). Since [K]Ubuntu's root account is disabled by default, it doesn't matter what password you enter - su won't work.
I don't remember encountering this problem, but the correct command to run has been "kdesudo" for a couple releases now.
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Re:Surprised (Score:5, Funny)
Mandriva is quality free distribution.
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Re:Surprised (Score:4, Informative)
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about new gentoo releases?
According to the release engineering page [gentoo.org], there was [slashdot.org].
Someone should post a story everytime they emerge --sync && emerge world
No, otherwise people running Mandriva cooker should post every time they 'urpmi --auto-update', or people running Debian testing should every time they run 'apt-get upgrade', or users on Fedora rawhide every time they run 'yum update' (ok, for Fedora, maybe not *every* time ...).
Just because you compiled it, doesn't mean you got it sooner than [mandriva.com] anyone [debian.org] else [fedoraproject.org]. (Note, the Mandriva build system is currently not accepting build submissions for "cooker" as cooker