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Mandriva Businesses Software Linux

Mandriva Linux 2006 Review Continued 73

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the under-the-magnifying-glass dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "The second part of the extensive Linux Tips for Free Mandriva Linux 2006 review has been published, going into details about the state of Linux hardware support and compatibility, hardware configuration and software with a whole section on digital photography. Part one was previously discussed on Slashdot."
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Mandriva Linux 2006 Review Continued More

Mandriva Linux 2006 Review Continued

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  • Quality of Articles (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kawahee ( 901497 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2005 @01:19AM (#14032668) Homepage Journal
    I'm not making a stab at the quality of the article here, but this seems to be like a little bit of self promotion. I mean, http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr [4.free.fr]? http://www.when.was.this.in.style.com [style.com]? And the poster comes from the website.

    Please don't mod this up or down, I'm just saying that I find there's something wrong with how this story got on /.

    • Re:Quality of Articles (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Dude. This is slashdot. The articles people submit get posted as stories. Anyone can submit.

      What do you think the natural result is? Besides, how else will we know about it unless the author tells us about it??? Sheesh. Do you get angry when Jeremy White posts an article about codeweavers developments? Because if you do, you're being a tad unreasonable. Not all submissions come from uninformed 3rd parties that copy and paste from the original site.

      • Not all submissions come from uninformed 3rd parties that copy and paste from the original site.

        Do you mean that's optional? I thought it was a requirement.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2005 @01:20AM (#14032670)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • This kind of a guide is extra sweet for folks like me, who Aren't hardcore Linux users/coders. (To Many 'advanced users' the occasional function string or what-have-you is expected, but having to open up your source code every time you make a change--e.g.: replacing your $10 keyboard with a new, slightly different $10 keyboard--is too much of a bloody hassle)

    Makes it a touch easier to gauge whether it's Worth said bloody hassle for a particular desired result--setting up my spiffy home theatre thru Lin

    • This kind of a guide is extra sweet for folks like me, who Aren't hardcore Linux users/coders. (To Many 'advanced users' the occasional function string or what-have-you is expected, but having to open up your source code every time you make a change--e.g.: replacing your $10 keyboard with a new, slightly different $10 keyboard--is too much of a bloody hassle)


      What kind of keyboard you have that you need to look at the source code to switch them around?

      ???
      • A Microsoft keyboard, of course.

        First, he used Keyboard 95, the first one with colour keys.

        Then he switched to Keyboard 98SE, which was very good for gaming.

        After the Keyboard ME failed after just unpacking, he had to wait for Keyboard 2000, which was pretty nice overall.

        Now, he is looking at Keyboard Vista, but this one requires very beeffy keyboard socket.

        (note to moderators: this is a joke, man!)
        • A Microsoft keyboard, of course.

          First, he used Keyboard 95, the first one with colour keys.

          Then he switched to Keyboard 98SE, which was very good for gaming.

          After the Keyboard ME failed after just unpacking, he had to wait for Keyboard 2000, which was pretty nice overall.
          You forgot the XP keyboard which he has used for near upon five years and needs to be upgraded to take advantage of the newer 64-bit computers.

  • Ugh (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Lord Byron II ( 671689 )
    Not Mandriva specific, since all of the distrobutions and packages are guilty to some degree, but this is a perfect example of what's wrong with the Linux desktop. Mandriva pops up a window when you connect a digital camera to give you the option of importing your photos. Great! But the title bar reads "Warning". No problem for us geeks, but now, think Grandma. What is she going to do when she gets a warning? Will she think that an error has occurred? Perhaps. That's why these dialog boxes need to have the
    • grandma will click ok to get rid of it then continue surfing the intweb with all the popups.

      seriously though, i think yoyu have a point. Some won't know how to take it.

    • these dialog boxes need to have the polish and unified feel that they do on XP or OS X.

      Sure Linux apps need improvement, but so do Windows apps. It seems that most people praising Windows (the OS and its apps) fail to see its defects. The fact that everybody is so used to those bugs, incomprehensible error messages, and erratic behaviours may explain why they passively accept this state of affairs.

      Sure there are some good things here and there, in this proprietary OS, but I really do hope that Linu

    • Re:Ugh (Score:4, Informative)

      by ookaze ( 227977 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2005 @06:04AM (#14033483) Homepage
      this is a perfect example of what's wrong with the Linux desktop

      No, this is a perfect example of what's right with the Mandriva desktop.

      Mandriva pops up a window when you connect a digital camera to give you the option of importing your photos

      Except you're completely wrong, which just shows that you were modded by anti-Linux zealots.
      It pops up a dialog when you connect a USB card or when you see the camera as a USB storage device.
      If you actually access your camera by its protocol or PPTP, it won't pop up a dialog because obviously, Mandriva knows that there are photos on it.
      It's great there, because then it guides the user to the photo managing app.

      Great! But the title bar reads "Warning". No problem for us geeks, but now, think Grandma

      No problem for Grandma either, as she will see the big friendly warning icon, which :
      - is not red
      - does not contain a cross
      - looks like ... a warning

      I'm pretty convinced your rant is a red herring, as most people will look, in order, at :
      - the icon
      - the big bold text in the dialog
      - what's written on the buttons
      - eventually the text in the dialog
      There's a big chance they will never even see the dialog had a title.

      What is she going to do when she gets a warning? Will she think that an error has occurred? Perhaps.

      No, she sure as hell won't, as the first thing her eye will catch is the icon, which sure as hell do not look like a frightening error, but just a friendly warning.

      That's why these dialog boxes need to have the polish and unified feel that they do on XP or OS X.

      Which they have ...
      In case you did not know, these dialog icons are stock GTK icons (not even Gnome, GTK !!).
      If you talk about the mix of GTK and KDE on Mandriva desktop, please remember that even some MS apps have not the same toolkit on Windows than the rest of the desktop, and have exactly the same problem.
      For example, some security dialogs of WinX SP2 are completely out of place compared to other dialogs. Or look at MS Office. Talk about "unified feel".

      • Re:Ugh (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        ... and the post by ookaze is a perfect example of linux advocates with their head in the sand. ookaze posts:

        > No problem for Grandma either, as she will see the big friendly warning icon, which :
        > - is not red
        > - does not contain a cross
        > - looks like ... a warning

        ... and uses that as justification for the dialog? The user plugged in a camera, why they heck should they get an icon that even remotely looks ominous? An exclamation point is not "friendly". Nitpick all you want, this is a warning

        • Just a question, here...

          How the hell do you expect us to design a desktop when users can't agree on what good design consists of?

  • why? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bcrowell ( 177657 )
    Mandrake was the first distro that I ever successfully installed. Woo hoo!

    But...

    Now that lots of Linux distros are fairly easy to install, what's the motivation to go with a commercial RPM-based distro?

    To me, the hard part about Linux now is not the install, it's stuff like getting sound and printing to work. Is that any easier on Mandriva than on Ubuntu, or vanilla Debian?

    • Re:why? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rolfwind ( 528248 )

      Now that lots of Linux distros are fairly easy to install, what's the motivation to go with a commercial RPM-based distro?

      Well, for one, the for-pay distribution target mostly businesses so a loss at the individual level (home user) is not so important - and Businesses want peace of mind that comes with support.

      Also, there are licenses that for-pay distributions have to pay to be allowed to distribute. This isn't in the base linux system but stuff like various non-free multimedia codecs or the nonfree mp3

    • Now that lots of Linux distros are fairly easy to install, what's the motivation to go with a commercial

      While the reviewer was using the commercial/Club version of Mandriva, the distribution is free, with real community participation. IMHO, only Debian (not Ubuntu) is more free.

      RPM-based distro?

      Vs a dpkg-based one? Who cares, you don't use dpkg to install packages, neither do you use rpm (you use apt for .debs, or urpmi for rpms, or smart for either).

      To me, the hard part about Linux now is not the install,
  • Before I knew any better [debian.org], I used to run Mandrake. This article gave me the first moment in many months that reminded me of the existance of Mandrake. Was that just me or did we all collectively tune out from Mandr*? To rephrase, what has Netcraft confirmed? :)

    • Re:flakey market (Score:4, Interesting)

      by rmm4pi8 ( 680224 ) <rmiller@@@reasonablereflection...net> on Tuesday November 15, 2005 @03:14AM (#14033016) Homepage
      Not everyone, I'm still on Mandriva. I know everyone says it's just for new people, but no one has given me a reason to switch: SuSE's YaST screws up hand-edited config files, Fedora requires much more set up to get running, and Ubuntu--why? Slackware and Gentoo just don't make sense for a laptop user who upgrades frequently. So why the beef with Mandriva--what's the downside? Everything they write is GPL, too.

      Besides, Mandriva has a fairly good community, as I'll demonstrate here by reiterating my offer to provide free email/IM support to any Slashdot-reading Mandriva user (or potential switcher). I'm not a kernel-hacker or anything, but I have been using it on desktops, laptops, and servers for 4 years now, and I can fix most things when they break.
      • What exactly do you mean by "Ubuntu--why?"? I tried it recently and, besides having to admit to people that I was running an OS named Hoary Hedgehog, I was very impressed. I never was that interested, actually, but I used the live CD for recovery when Windows trashed the partition table on my first drive during a reinstall, and I really liked it. For some reason, the actual install has issues with my NIC that the live CD didn't have (awaiting forums feedback on that), but overall, I think it provides a very
        • If you were impressed by an already installed Ubuntu, you will be amazed with an already installed Mandriva.

          Mandriva has always been the desktop Linux distribution.

          Sure, Ubuntu has come a long way from its Debian origin. But, see, all this travel was already been covered by Mandrake/Mandriva many releases ago.

          Ubuntu is advanced and desktop-ready, true. Bu it is at the same position as Mandrake was in the 8.x times.

          I have been using Linux on the desktop for longer I care to remember. And only Mandrake provid
    • Mandrake is the first linux system that I installed my my system that worked. I tryed suse 9.1 but it was full of bugs, which I have sence heard that is now fixed in 10.x and later. But I have not had much of a poblom with mandrake other then the newbie user errors that I caused. I am now getting ready to move fully over to linux on my desk top and I plan on useing mandrak for the time being

  • Growing Pains (Score:1, Informative)

    by Risto ( 666860 )
    Every .0 release of Mandrake/iva has been ridden with problems URPMI an PLF and Coooker are the reaseons I keep coming back to Mandrake but seriously 2006 is one of the worst releases they have put out since 8.0 It is Much slower than 2005(10.2), much less stable; it lacks apache1, which I still prefer, the list goes on and on. KDE 3.4 with its kat and kdewallet annoyances... but again it's a .0 release, so It's almost expected.
    • Kat is a major cpu hog, even if a cool "keeping up with Win/Mac on the cheap" tech. Turn that off and you'll find that KDE 3.4 is getting you some major speed improvements.
    • Speaking from the standpoint of someone trying to get friends and associates to switch to ANY flavour of Linux, this Mandriva release was a big step forward. An IBM Thinkpad I tried to install to with the latest Debian release was marginal at best. I could never get the screen fonts to be acceptable when in X-Windows for any application. Firefox was a mess to look at. Also, it kept reverting to 800x600 resolution. The sound didn't work either.

      With the free Mandriva 3 CD install set, the entire installation

    • "Much slower" and "less stable"? Do you have anything to back that up?
      I'm running several Mandriva boxes with either 2005 LE or 2006 on them, and don't notice either of these issues. I disabled the Kat desktop search thing - I don't need it, I don't want it, and it just slows things down.
      Mandriva's version of Apache 2.0, called ADVX, runs in "pre-fork" mode, so that avoids the issues with non-thread-safe 3rd party PHP modules.
      As a desktop, Mandriva 2006 is really nice. The one gripe I have is the default se
    • apache1 is in the contrib section.

  • This review is excellent. This is exactly what Linux community needs to make the operating system friendly enough to be interesting to new users. These kind of articles combined with the efforts like the one few days ago, where there was a bunch of flash movies about using the OpenOffice, are invaluable resource for non-computer-savvy people to get to know Linux-based environment better and especially to find the rich set of applications it can provide.

  • Mandriva 2006 ISO: now available + all reviews (Score:4, Informative)

    by joestar ( 225875 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2005 @05:04AM (#14033341) Homepage
    For those who want to try this brand-new version, ISO images (CD,DVD, mini-CD and live-CD) of the 2006 have hit public FTP mirrors last week-end (note: the x86-64 version only comes as a 3-CD and mini-CD image). Tip: right after a fresh install, don't forget to apply all security and bugfixes updates if you want a secure and stable system.

    Download mirrors are listed here [mandriva.com].

    All 2006 reviews have been summarized here [distrowatch.com].
  • Anybody know if online upgrading the rpms from an old version of Mandrake (say LE2005) to 2006 works? I mean, if I just use urpmi.addmedia to add 2006 repos to an installation of LE2005, install the base header rpm of 2006 by force and just update all the other roms to the 2006 ones via urpmi, will that work or will it be a wasteland of broken packages and unresolvable dependencies? What about using the "upgrade" option on the boot cd? I've googled for this and It seems to work for some people and not for o
    • Upgrading from 2005 to 2006 can be done by simply setting up the correct urpmi sources and doing a urpmi --auto-select.

      No "base header rpm" (what's that?) or whatnots.

      From the 2006 release notes upgrade info [mandriva.com]: the only note on upgrade is about gnome-panel, which gets uninstalled during auto upgrade. You have to urpmi gnome-panel after you've done urpmi --auto-select.

      HTH.

    • Re:distro upgrade? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A safer way:

      1. Exit graphical enviroment and go to console (Ctrl-Alt-F1)
      2.login as root and switch to runlevel 3 (telinit 3)
      3.urpmi.removemedia -a
      4. go to http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/index.php [zarb.org] and set up sources for the release you want to upgrade to
      5. urpmi --test urpmi (test if urpmi's upgrade works)
      6. urpmi urpmi (if you get no errors in previous step)
      7. urpmi --auto --auto-select --test (we want to make sure upgrade will work) If you have non-official rpm's/files, remove them and try again
      8. urpmi --auto
    • This is precisely the problem with rpm-based distros. Users usually resign themselves to getting the latest sw packages when Mandrake decides to release a new update, with (gasp) kde 3.4 and gcc 4.0, both of which have been out for six months or so... If I'm running a debian or source-based distro like gentoo, i can use apt-get 'package name' or emerge 'package name', dependencies will be resolved, and the package will be installed (bar rare package conflicts that are generally easy to resolve)... But asid

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