"I like Ubuntu. With each incarnation I'm seeing improvements and betterments that make the OS better, more robust, more user friendly and more fully-featured. In fact, Ubuntu 8.04 is the first Linux distro that I've come across that I would consider loading onto my notebook to replace Windows. Throughout my testing Ubuntu 8.04 beta has been reliable and performed flawlessly. Bottom line, Hardy Heron is, for me at least, the best Linux distro ever," writes Adrian Kingsley-Hughes.
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Member since:2006-02-15
Why not? How is Mandriva less user friendly than Ubuntu? In fact, Mandriva was the pioneer of the user friendly linux desktop. Yes there were some missteps along the way but things are real good nowadays.
In fact, it would nice to see a comparison of Mandriva too.
Mandriva just requires a little bit more pre-experience than Ubuntu. Like when I installed Mandriva on this laptop I found out it doesn't have any repositories enabled by default so it couldn't install new apps nor could it even check for updates unless I added the repos there. That's not very beginner-friendly, they won't even know what a repository is. Oh, and there's things like this doesn't automatically install needed codecs for media files and so on.. Though, that is apparently going to be fixed in Mandriva 2008.1 Spring
I also didn't really like the default settings, like f.ex. there's something like 4 different video players installed and they are all used to play different files.. And I also hit a bug during the installation where there was this "Welcome" screen, but it was in italian :O Clicking on back button reset it to english but then the buttons were in german. I did ask about it in IRC and someone there said it is a common bug.
Member since:2005-08-07
Well the name for one.... How the heck can anyone take a distro whose name sounds like a gay male dancer seriously is beyond me....
At least with Ubuntu I can always explain it's the African word that means...
Errr...sadly I don't remember it that way. Really, as far as I was concerned Mandrake, Lycoris, and Connectiva all had issues that made me unable to make any serious use out of them. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't most of their user friendliness from using colorful and nicely tarted up themes more oe less? Whenever you wanted to get anything changed in the actual system itself you always had to use distro specific tools which never quite seemed to integrate well with the rest os the system...
Sounds good to me. Let's see first thing they need to do is install Gnome...
--bornagainpenguin
Member since:2006-02-15
Well the name for one.... How the heck can anyone take a distro whose name sounds like a gay male dancer seriously is beyond me....
Hmm...Maybe it's just you who's thinking of such gay male dancers? Atleast I didn't come to think of anything even remotely like that :O
Sounds good to me. Let's see first thing they need to do is install Gnome...
I am using GNOME on both my desktop and laptop under Mandriva. Works just fine and peachy 
The only thing I really have to complain about is that the default installation didn't include Eye of gnome or Gthumb..I always set up Gthumb to import photos from digital camera, and Eog is just such a good no-fuss image viewer. So anyways, what was it again about installing/using Gnome under Mandriva? ^^
Member since:
2005-07-24
I am using Mandriva Powerpack. This far a good and solid distro, but I will absolutely not recommend it to beginners. Not newbie friendly.
Why not? How is Mandriva less user friendly than Ubuntu? In fact, Mandriva was the pioneer of the user friendly linux desktop. Yes there were some missteps along the way but things are real good nowadays.
In fact, it would nice to see a comparison of Mandriva too.