Mandriva flashes its small aggressive penguin The end of year race to update product names has begun in earnest, with Mandriva becoming one of the first to launch a product with 2010 in its moniker. The Paris-based Linux outfit flagged up Mandriva Linux 2010 last night. If that's too much of a mouthful for you, you can just stick with the codename, Adelie. The big push …
I am a Mandriva man myself (2008.1 Spring currently) but recently had the dubious pleasure of installing Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope.
Personally I was quite disappointed with Ubuntu, given all the glowing reviews/recommendations. And the main reason is the lack of choice; the installer does not give you any chance to choose what you want to do.
Firstly the partitioner only gives you the opportunity to partition the first disk (I found this with Ubuntu server as well). Secondly it did not update the permissions on my /home directory (which I wanted to preserve intact, obviously), with the result that I had to manually change the permissions on the /home directory as it refused to log into a desktop (KDE and Gnome).
Lastly I also did not have any choice regarding which packages I wanted installed (e.g either Gnome or KDE, either OO.o or KDEOffice, et cetera). It seems as if you are stuck with whatever Canonical has deemed to be fit for you and then having to set it up the way you want it afterwards.
In mitigation ,though, it could be that this particular distro was locked down by Linux Format Magazine, as it came from their DVD (so-called Enhanced edition) bundled with the July 2009 edition.
I also miss Mandriva's System tools and Control centre. In all I found Ubuntu much more difficult to set up (an in some cases it seems as if one would have to descend into the command line in order to tune it to one's liking) than Mandriva.
I have always wondered about the anti-Linux crowd who regularly (when the perennial question of "Is Linux ready for the desktop?" question surfaces) complains about the fact that one HAS to use the command line to accomplish things in Linux, but now realise that they might have a point (at least as far as Ubuntu is concerned).
Of course, some of my complaints may also be a KDE fault (KDE 4.2) rather than Ubuntu, given that this was also my first experience of 4 and the negative comments that abound regarding KDE4. I will reserve judgement on that until I have seen what it looks and behaves like under Mandriva.
What did impress was the quick install (less than an hour - I actually scuttled off for a while and was quite surprised to find that it had finished installing). Boot time is also extremely fast: not more than 45 seconds to login (and on a fairly basic machine: 512 MB RAM, single Intel CPU (Don't have the specs with me)).
I would say that, if you want a distro that does not demand much from you in terms of choice, Ubuntu is the way to go. Just install and be done with it. However, if you like the ability to choose how your machine is set up, Mandriva definitely should be your choice (although you certainly can also just go with the defaults).
If I may stray off-topic a bit, I find the arguments about boot times rather silly (and pointless). A much more meaningful metric would be to measure how long it takes from the moment the "on" button was pressed until you can start doing something productive (like open a document or a browser or mail).
My (work) XP notebook, for instance, takes about two minutes to boot to the log-in screen, but then takes another three to four minutes after that before you can even think of doing something productive. My Mandriva machine takes about a minute to boot, plus probably a further twenty seconds to load the toolbar, whilst the Ubuntu machine is almost immediately usable (if you ignore the silly Akonadi start-up and subsequent error screens, that I still have not been able to disable or get rid of). These are just my observations, though, as the three machines are vastly different and can in no way be directly compared (worst - XP machine, then Ubuntu and best Mandriva machine).
"In mitigation ,though, it could be that this particular distro was locked down by Linux Format Magazine"
Nope, that's just the way *buntu is. And it's on purpose, I suspect. First, it has to fit in a CD. Second, it's supposed to be a beginner's distro, so the installation scenario you want is completely out of the question. It is already too complicated for most users as it is! Imagine when they see a list of Gnome, KDE, server, etc (I remember SuSE having such a list years ago). Let alone if they see the list of text editors and the like (vi, Emacs, Abiword, KOffice, etc., etc. what!?)... They have no clue what to answer and will get nervous -- I'm gonna break the machine if I choose wrong! Therefore, click cancel, throw the install CD in the bin and boot back in XP (cue noobs sigh of relief). Abundance of choice is only useful if you know what you are doing, otherwise it's counterproductive. At least that's my experience -- I hate long restaurant menus. :-)
I've mostly been using various Linux distros as Windows system maintenance tools. For instance, I'd advise Windows owners to partition their disk with about 15 gigabytes system volume and do it early, because there are files in NTFS that can't be defragged or moved across your partition if they fall outside your desired volume size - except with Linux ntfsresize or a partitioner based on it, apparently, and maybe. So call it 15 gig plus the size of a hibernation file if you want one. The size is chosen so that on a good day you can fit a bzip2 compressed backup made with Linux partimage onto one DVD. (Having disabled hibernation and possibly rebooted to exclude that file from backup.) And then restore Windows the way it was after quite serious possible breakdowns.
So, yeah, Ubuntu... Yes, it fits onto a bootable CD or onto a USB stick, as well as onto hard disk, which is good if you want to use your optical drive -with- Linux or if you don't have one on the machine. However, for good reasons I'm sure, Linux Format magazine gave us a DVD of 9.04 with extra stuff, including entire 64-bit and alternate/minimal CD images, but then the USB stick transfer apparently wants a stick large enough to hold all of that, since it's on the Live disc. A 4 GiB will do it, or some expert tinkering may pull it off (Wubi?), but I just downloaded the plain CD of Ubuntu 9.04 and used that on a pretty little 1 GB stick.
I then replaced it with version 9.10 on the stick, but by the sound of it I will want to look more closely at some error messages in very tiny writing when 9.10 boots from stick and/or from CD. Or... are there enough issues for a maintenance update to be appear soon following 9.10?
Linux Format also provideds an "EcoDisc" DVD, which appears to mean "half the thickness and rather breakable", so I assume, since it's Linux, it's absolutely okay to make a useing copy. How many backup copies of one Windows system you can legally make is another question. Many software licences say you are entitled to make one backup copy. But who sleeps soundly when they have only one backup copy?
Much of what isn't on Ubuntu's CD can be relatively easily downloaded anyway after installing, and one CD's worth of disk space as a default install isn't greedy these days. Even a compressed CD - aren't they all?
"Much of what isn't on Ubuntu's CD can be relatively easily downloaded..."
Problem here in sunny South Africa is the lack of bandwidth. I have a DSL line (384 kb!, which is considered broadband here. Max in over the past year: 8.875 kBps with an average of 1.15 kBps) with a 3 GB cap per month, that costs me an arm and a leg.
So yeah - theoretically there is a lot that can be downloaded, bit practical (and economical) it ain't. I just shake my head in wonder when I read that someone "quickly downloaded the DVD to..."
well if fedora wasn't so darn good, i'd be tempted to try mandriva. it's funny, i started out with redhat, moved to mandrake, then to knoppix/debian and now back to fedora.
i still have mandrake installed on an old machine back home, and it rocks!!
windows XP is awesome as well just as long as i'm running it in virtualbox.
As a primary Fedora/CeNT OS user, I'd like to say congrats to the Mandriva Developers & community. It's nice to have new releases every so often and this one looks pretty good. I occasionally browse planet mandriva and they seem pretty tuned into the bigger Gnu/Linux ecosystem.
Doubt I'll try the new release out but it's nice to have additional team players in the community knocking down windows and walls.
"Both KDE and GNOME are integrated" Yuck. No thanks. I don't have any of that crap on my machine.
I'll be sticking to plain 'ol Debian Testing with my own home-grown fvwm2 config, thank you very much. With all my key shortcuts, I can work for 3 or 4 hours without even touching a mouse.
PulseAudio now works better - there's now balance / fade controls. They also appear to have boosted the internal amplifier. However, tweaking individual speaker channels still requires mucking about with alsamixer in a terminal.
Plymouth replaces Splashy as the loading screen - complete with a 3D effect throbber instead of a progress bar. There's also a built in guest account, which saves userdata to a RAM disk rather than the HDD, so it all gets erased on logoff. Handy for showing a friend around your system without worrying about setting up a special account for them, or them trashing your existing setup and config.
Rpmdrake is still as painfully slow to refresh itself as ever - but the repos are bang up to date - even including FF 3.5.5 Epiphany is now Webkit based and gets a 100% score on Acid3 (compared to 91% for FF, or under 21% for Bill's Browsers - most of which still fail Acid2)
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