“MandrakeLinux always had a reputation as an ideal distribution for beginners. Now that the renamed Mandriva has included technologies from Conectiva and Lycoris into Mandriva Linux 2006, this reputation seems more justified than ever. From its installation program to its selection of software and desktop design to its package design and security options, Mandriva is one of the easiest to use distributions available today.” Read more here.
Review: Mandriva Linux 2006
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
for some reason we seem to be getting more and more
rather strange reviews of linux distros. not just
Mandriva but some of the others.
Mandrive includes the command line. if u want
to become a guru then go for it.
sheesh.
hi urgenia
I didn’t find that this article mentioned much of what was supposed to have been brought over from Lycoris, I had to have a look at the Mandriva site to find out.
http://frontal2.mandriva.com/en/individuals/products/2006discoveryl…
it doesn’t look like much was brought over from Lycoris so far.
It’s interesting to note that Mandriva 2006 discovery doesn’t have OO.o 2.0. 1.1.5 is still good but if you get odt files and you want to edit and then save them you stand to loose formatting. Mandriva should have stuck to simply leaving the development tools and server software out.
http://frontal2.mandriva.com/en/individuals/products/2006comparison
It’s too bad the article wasn’t more informative, although brief articles seem to be a common trend today.
The reason the reviewer didn’t see anything from Lycoris is because he was reviewing Powerpack+, which doesn’t _have_ anything from Lycoris. Joe Cheek is working on Discovery / LX, which is the edition where the Lycoris influence has been put in.
Discovery doesn’t have OO.o 2.0 because of space. It’s only 3 CDs, and they’re jam packed. You can set up a contrib urpmi media and install it and it’ll work perfectly, though.
Thank you for clarifying this.
By any chance are the screenshots on shots.osdir.com also of the powerpack edition? They didn’t have the lycoris icons and walpapers showing either.
The shots on OSDir are of the FTP (download) edition.
I don’t know why I cannot find that stability I found with even an old distros like Xandros v 3.
Every thing seems to be scattered as with other low quality distros: Control Panels are not for control of system devices, you have to go to mcc ( mandrake control center) and when you go there some features don’t function with the first mouse click and you need to open 4 windows to configure samba to work with your windows shares.
and some badly burned DVDs/CDs will freeze the whole OS, this is not acceptable. Where do I begin and where do I end; this distro seems to be lost in Linux Chaos. All distro makers please look at Xandros and Ubuntu and mimic.
Mandriva’s reliability tends to vary with your hardware, and with each release it tends to change. I’ve found that Mandrake 8.2, 9.1 and 10.0 worked nicely for me, but the ones in between those didn’t. Your mileage varies depending on the version, sometimes it’s better to stick with an older one while other times it’s good to upgrade; either way using the version you already have for another 6 to 12 months won’t kill you, people do it all the time.
Give Mandriva some time to roll out fixes, it does take time and sometimes rare bugs get neglected as with any OS.
I cannot agree with that last line where you said: “All distro makers please look at Xandros and Ubuntu and mimic”, I just have to say that’s very ignorant. The whole point of Linux is that there’s something for everyone; I don’t like Xandros or Ubuntu at all, but do like Mandriva, SUSE and Ark. Distributions vary, that’s the whole point of having distributions. Why bother having any if they should all be like Xandros or Ubuntu.
I agree about the reliability between versions. I triewd 2006 discovery on this PC and it work sweet…. apart from opengl not working on my fx5500 card
Now, this is my games machine here, so I messed around for a few hours to try and sort it, no joy.
Back to 2005LE for this machine anyway.
The others, and the machines of my fmaily members are all running 2006 and all without problem. And they all have a mixture of ATI cards, so it looks like the fortunes have been reversed in this release.
BTW – I can do without all the replies about how to get Nvidia drivers installed on 2006. I tried them all, and I tried the club forums.
Well, you discovered that mandrake linux/Mandriva versions are not stable in some releases but good on some others; this confirms my judgement for this distro but you missed the whole picture, I don’t have your hardware on my systems to stay a chance, beside when I say that this distro is not stable (even since version 7) then I mean on at least 10 systems which I consider a good experimental sample; Xandros and Ubuntu managed to install on all these computers plus others that I tested on the lab I used to work in. If some of the customers prefer some distros because they include their preferred application or for another reason then this got nothing to do with judging this distro for the masses or the enterprises; again Xandros(3.0.2 BE) beats all distros hands down when it comes to answering the enterprises and consumers alike that’s if you are willing to pay 130 US $ for it; if not then try ubuntu it’s the best of the free world.
“this confirms my judgement for this distro but you missed the whole picture, I don’t have your hardware on my systems to stay a chance, beside when I say that this distro is not stable (even since version 7) then I mean on at least 10 systems which I consider a good experimental sample;”
Perhaps you should say that up front next time, before it didn’t sound like more than one computer was involved. Intersting though how everyone these days seems to have at least 10 different computers set up in a lab just for testing distributions. If those computers of yours are in fact 10 different ones and you cannot get Mandriva to work nicely on all of them then there is something at fault, but it’s not the distribution; Mandriva can be freely downloaded during the beta period and hundreds of people get involved, it gets a lot of testing by all those people before getting a stable release.
“Xandros and Ubuntu managed to install on all these computers plus others that I tested on the lab I used to work in.”
And yet just like Mandriva they will have hardware that they don’t support well. I’ve got a laptop which gets far better hardware support with Mandriva than with Ubuntu or Xandros, and it’s a Toshiba, not some no name one.
“If some of the customers prefer some distros because they include their preferred application or for another reason then this got nothing to do with judging this distro for the masses or the enterprises”
Seriously, who likes a distribution over one application? People like distributions because they work for them in the way they like best out of all the other distributions tried. Also the underline part of that quote seems to translate literally into: If someone likes a distribution they cannot say it’s good for other people or businesses. You can stop pretending you’re an adult with a lab that has 10 computers now, it’s obvious by your posts that you’re really just some kid trying to con everyone. How else but by trying distributions do you determine which one(s) is/are best suited for you and, assuming you have one, your business. Interesting how you’re saying that every distribution should be like Xandros or Ubuntu because those are the two you like, but then you say that I can’t say Mandriva is good because I like it. Try applying some logic to your arguments.
“If some of the customers prefer some distros because they include their preferred application or for another reason then this got nothing to do with judging this distro for the masses or the enterprises; again Xandros(3.0.2 BE) beats all distros hands down when it comes to answering the enterprises and consumers alike that’s if you are willing to pay 130 US $ for it; if not then try ubuntu it’s the best of the free world.”
Ok, so basically what you’re saying is that no one but you can say that a distribution is good for the masses or for enterprises.
Face it kid, if you want to pretend to be a adult who knows what they’re talking about, the first think you need to do is know what you’re talking about. You’re post in this case is little more than the typical 6 yr old’s “You’re wrong because I’m right” argument with the sophistocation of a 14-17 year old troll at best.
“…..if not then try ubuntu it’s the best of the free world.”
Actually, of the distros that I have tested, Ubuntu was the only one that consistently crashed on installs on my laptop (HP Pavilion 5100) and on my desktop (custom made PC by CyberPower). I was able to run the live CD on both of the machines, but there wasn’t anything remotely special about that distro that isn’t found in any other distro. The hardware detection on that live CD wouldn’t detect the wireless card in my laptop, which Mandriva, Knoppix, FC, and SUSE detected without any problem. Nor would it recognize the controls for my volume on the front of my laptop like SUSE does so well.
Ubuntu is hardly the “best” of the free world. I’m glad it works good for you, but it’s certainly lacking in the hardware detection that other distros, in my experience, have proven to be so much better at.
mandriva is mandrake with chrome trim.
it has installed well on the two think pads i have used and find wireless access points with ease. it reads my randomly chosen digital camera, an olympus 300. it reads my memory stick. but hell, even freebsd, installed as pc-bsd, reads all my devices. y’all know i love ubuntu.
this open source sharing of knowledge, a long tradition historically, is keeping the internet free. mandriva stands on the shining hill with the best of open examples! Y’all keep it up and soon the internet will be like 50’s TV; as in free. Maybe finally, FINALLY, humanity will have the smart, free to all, tube. Go Ogle.
javajazz
I tried installing both Mdk 10.1 and MdV 2005LE on an Acer Travelmate 2310 but neither of these worked on it without problems. Couldn’t finish a GUI install of 10.1 on the laptop so had to use the ncurses based install. As for 2005LE – the virtual consoles were unusable – the fonts couldn’t seen.
Currently I am running 2006.0 RC2 on the same laptop for about two weeks – no complaints !!
Well done Mandrake ( sorry, I meant Mandriva !).
I haven’t used Mandrake for a while. Now with acquisitions of 2 distros the products can get confusing. I laze-away reading the differences between their products. Would someone please point out the differences that really really counts?
Edited 2005-11-03 12:04
Installed Firefox, installed RealPlayer.
Launched website with Real content. No plugin found. Closed Mozilla.
Launched RealPlayer, it offered to configure the mozilla helper. OK, did it. Closed RealPlayer.
Launched Firefox again and went to the same site. Bummer.
This just sucks, these things almost never work on most distros. At least Linspire is properly configured for multimedia.
This problem is found in most distro. And it’s something that never happen under Windows. I don’t know why it’s so hard to do it right with linux distro.
The amount of codecs that have to be installed in order to do anything with linux is simply crazy. Nothing is built-in. Copyright, Rights, whatever, have got to be cleared in order to have distro that works on install.
Of the free distro, only Ubuntu can play MP3 after install. I did not test EVERY distro, but enough to know that this is a problem. Even if it’s easy to get them and install them, it should be built-in. Hello, welcome to 2005!!
must I use VESA drivers with my ATI 8500 card? or reduce color palette to 16bit? Hehe, I have never seen a display as destroyed as the one after installing MDK2006 with Xorg 6.9 and radeon (both open and proprietary) drivers.
Everything could be included.If you are happy with a similar activation procedure as XP users have to endure.
Although it’s less than waterproof,the vendors still want some garantee in numbers.