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."
Re:Mandrake? (Score:2, Informative)
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)
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.
Re:Surprised (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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.
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:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Mandriva 2008 Spring was the best yet... (Score:3, Informative)
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 reproduce it ...
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)
I didn't try 2010.0 on my Acer Aspire One, so I can't comment here, but I didn't see any bugs filed on this.
mandriva 2009 was completely unusable with kde 4.1...
Which is why KDE3 was still available for it, unlike other distributions that were released at the same time.
Re:Mandriva 2008 Spring was the best yet... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I think Mandriva is getting a raw deal from us. (Score:3, Informative)
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:Whichever moron tagged this as "irrelevant"... (Score:3, Informative)
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 occasions when trying to uninstall OpenOffice in particular; it is tied in for some reason with almost the entire rest of the system. Apt/dpkg is particularly bad for having false dependencies associated with packages, although rpm is generally not immune to that problem either.
I do fully believe that case. I've only run a single Debian system with X11 installed in my life (10+ years for using Debian on headless servers, still to this day) and yes the X11 dependencies are very messed up.
That bit was actually one of the few improvements Ubuntu had over Debian. Effortless X11 auto detection and such (Which Mandrake does have too ofc)
The only time I ran into a similar issue was a console app that had some X-lib listed as a dependency, which itself of course had the rest of X11 as a dependency. :/
Sadly, that is still the cream of the crop of package management these days
DKMS I find to be a complete mess; I've never been able to get a kernel compile to work on any Debian-based system; I always get tangled up in the jungle of perl scripts when I've tried doing it by the book. I should probably have just done it manually.
The 'debian way' is to use kbuild for your custom kernels. After a fakeroot compile, you end up with a .deb with the version number set as such to never be replaced by an official kernel.
I do admit that was an insanely poor documented process however. It some times IS easier to compile your own kernel manually and just exclude kernels (via apt pinning) from upgrades.
However, once you get used to and start using the kbuild setup, one main advantage is that it integrates very nicely with ksplice (Updates not just the kernel file on disk and package, but modifies the running kernel in memory with the same patches, so no reboots are required.)
To some, that is worth the pain of kbuild.. And there are of course other deployment aspects it makes easier, if one needs such features. If all you want is to get a custom kernel up quickly however, it can be annoying.
The init system I found almost incomprehensible, coming from a background primarily of Slackware and LFS; although I eventually figured that out.
Ahh yes. That comes from Debian using the SysV style init, and Slackware using the BSD style init.
That init system has been in use in SunOS (now Solaris) for a long time, and some other Unix OSs (AIX comes to mind) have used SysV as well.
As I came from a Slackware and BSD background, the SysV init system was a major change to me too, however I had to learn it for running a SunOS system, so was sorta set when I moved away from Slackware.
It's also worth noting that Slackware is the only major Linux distro to still use the BSD style init system. Of course the 'roll your own system from scratch' methods could very well use it too, but they are hardly major ;)
I have to say however, once I figured that out, I do prefer SysV style setups. /etc/rc.local just like the BSD scripts would use. You can still put a simple one-liner in there to start something instead of making a Sxx-name.sh script if you wanted.
Debian and Ubuntu have a 'both' feature as well. You still have SysV init at the core, but that system then runs
The fourth thing was that with virtually every application I tried to install that had dotfiles, there seemed to be two; one which was hardwired in by Debian in the location