Review of the new Mandriva 2007 Spring Edition. We downloaded and installed three different versions of Mandriva 2007.1 and there was one version that come out head and shoulders above the rest.
Mandriva 2007 Spring Edition (2007.1) Review
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The different Mandriva editions and the differences between them are very comprehensively listed and explained on the Wiki:
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Choosing_the_right_edition
This page was linked directly from the 2007 Spring release page:
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Releases/Mandriva/2007.1
which in turn was referenced in all the 2007 Spring release publicity.
Couple of things the author could have done with Free:
1) run through the installation again and don’t use the ‘Test’ button
2) boot in failsafe mode (it’s right there on the boot menu) and set the root password
Please note that the non-free drivers (NVIDIA, ATI etc) can easily be installed on Free from the public non-free repository. See http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Basic_tasks/Installing_and_removin… for instructions on setting up a non-free repository on your system.
We’re aware of the issue with not detecting other Linux distros, it’s something we may be able to fix for 2008.
The simpler KDE menu in ‘One 2007’ v the extra hierarchy in the menu of Free & Powerpack editions is IIRC selectable in Mandriva Control Center. I personally prefer the latter as similarly adopted in PCLinuxOS.
He seems to think the KDE Control Center should be incorporated into Mandriva Control Center saying ‘One 2007’ is KDE centric. I view Mandriva as desktop neutral so incorporating KCC into MCC wouldn’t be any more practical or visually consistent than incorporating Gnome or Xfce or any other DE preferences panel.
Besides MCC is for system level stuff that I use at different times to when changing DE preferences so consistency isn’t important here.
Brian
Makes me want to give it a try. Wish there had been a bit more depth to the article though.
2007.1 is the shiny new car on the block. Very polished and seems to be getting a lot of reviews too.
Seem a bit Ubuntu’esque maybe? 😉
No Mandriva 2007.1 is absolutely nothing like Ubuntu. I actually want to run Mandriva
Nothing I’ve seen in Mandriva reminds me of Ubuntu. Mandrake had good usability and decent polish long before I felt that Ubuntu was usable, and even before it came into existence. It’s true that Mandrake stumbled a bit, became Mandriva, and lost some users, but Mandriva’s current strengths have little to do with Ubuntu.
With respect to getting a lot of reviews, I have said before that I think Ubuntu 7.04 is the best distribution Canonical has ever released, and 2007.1 looks like it is the best distribution the Mandriva/Mandrake group has ever released. As people hear good things about a distribution, they often decide to try it out. Those who are inclined to write reviews will.
Sorry, but is there some kind of virus around here (not talking to you personally) that makes people want to either call hype on everything, compare everything to Ubuntu (on a superficial level, rather than something technological) or complain that a certain subject is covered too many times (which is irrelevant cause you don’t have to click on any article if you don’t want to)?
Let’s talk some relevant stuff and discuss things in their own right. We don’t want to have to mod people down, do we.
And, on the review, I’d also like to say that Mandriva Free is not “terrible”, it’s just not for the reviewer(‘s hardware), apparently.
And it consists of free software only, which makes it good to see how much you can already do with only free software.
I prefer to have a Mandriva Free type system and then add whatever proprietary I really need (usually, a couple media codecs and Flash), in stead of the other way around.
Though I’m experimenting with Ubuntu a bit, I still feel a lot more comfortable with Mandriva. One big reason is that I can make RPMs sing and dance. I can query the RPM database and uninstalled RPMs to get any information I want. Maybe you can do the same with dpkg or apt-something, but I haven’t figured it out.
Seem a bit Ubuntu’esque maybe? 😉
More the other way around. Mandriva pioneered the powerful, easy-to-use Linux desktop. Like anyone else, it has had its ups and downs (haven’t you??), but there is no doubt in my mind that Mandriva pioneered the world that Ubuntu is currently thriving in.
I must admit with you. Mandrake, back then, was the first distro to work out of the box on my laptop. It was quite easy. I think what Ubuntu came with that lacked with Mandrake/Mandriva is the look. This is my personnal view, but I’ve always found mandriva to be ugly on the eye. Ubuntu is quite surprising with its brown, but the desktop is really clean and useful. Because my first impression of Mandrake’s/Mandriva’s was “it’s ugly”, I went to try something else.
My point is: the appearance is really important. That’s the first impression a distro can make. So to attract new users, except if they are geeks who don’t care, the distro need to be nice on the eye.
It’s kinda funny about all the Ubuntu hype. I tried the latest KUbuntu on my IBM Thinkpad at work. Gave it a couple of weeks, which I thought was a fair shake. It had problems with the video card and the sound card. I then installed Mandriva 2007.1 to see if it had the same issues, and it found everything, which all worked out of the box. It just feels that Mandriva has more ‘polish’, and hardware support. It’s unfortunate that they don’t even a fraction of the hype that Ubuntu gets.
BTW: AdamW – you are a great resource, keep up the good work!
My point is: the appearance is really important. That’s the first impression a distro can make. So to attract new users, except if they are geeks who don’t care, the distro need to be nice on the eye.
Well, I disagree. I realize many people don’t like the “Mandrake/Iva” look, but I have always liked it. What others call “cartoonish” I have always considered merely whimsical and friendly. I think it depends on the target audience. If you are targetting the uber-geeks, then you want semi-clad alien goddesses wandering on Venus. If you are targetting businesses, then you want simple lines, mixtures of basic colors, etc. I have always felt that the Mandriva themes appealed more to a friendly crowd, the kindler/gentler home linux user.
Nevertheless, I get very tired of the whole “theme” issue even being important. Just distribute ten or twelve themes and let the user pick. I’d much rather have usability and functionality play more central roles than whether or not the right shade of mauve was used on the default background.
[Edit: can’t spell]
Edited 2007-05-11 16:56
So, I’ve been running Kubuntu for a year and a half, and every six months I get an itch (usually right before their big release) to try other distros.
Mandrake was my very first distro seven years ago (paid for it, in fact) and I always give them the benefit of the doubt (even though the last few years it wasn’t compelling).
The Spring 2007 One release is absolutely amazing. This is the type of release that won’t make me go back to Kubuntu, even with apt and automatix. This release is just.that.good.
I highly recommend download the live CD and trying it. There is a polish to this release that is unmatched by K/X/Ubuntu (and at the current rate, won’t be matched for years) and rivals Suse in regards to that ‘complete’ feeling.
But I find it rather interesting that they’ve stuck with 2.6.17 rather than going with 2.6.20 – isn’t there enough changes in 2.6.20 to make it worth while updating their kernel?
This isn’t a troll, just curious as to the logic behind it and whether they’re going to hold off till 2.6.22 which includes the new 802.11 stack is merged.
We decided to keep the base system the same for 2007 and 2007 Spring (kernel, glibc, a few other very low level bits) in order to increase reliability and to provide a stable platform for developers. Changes in the 2.6 kernel series between ‘minor’ versions are very significant. There is an alternate kernel build available in the /contrib repository named kernel-tmb, maintained by one of our community members, Thomas Backlund. It contains all the important Mandriva customizations and so works properly on Mandriva, and is kept very up-to-date: in 2007 Spring it’s a 2.6.20 kernel. The price to be paid is occasional problems and kinks: for instance, to use it on 2007 Spring, you have to do some stuff to ensure your IDE controller module is added to the initrd, because recent kernels completely changed IDE handling. The way to do this is documented in the notes shown when you install kernel-tmb, so if you want to try it, make sure to read them. But it’s a good kernel to use if you have very recent hardware which really needs a post-2.6.17 kernel.
The next Mandriva release, 2008, will introduce a new base system with an updated kernel version.
forgot to mention, Thomas tried enabling the new wireless stack in kernel-tmb for a while but it proved too disruptive and unstable at present so it was disabled again…
You mean like, the ‘interesting’ change that has (S)ATA/IDE disks designated as sd* in stead of hd*?
Just kidding.
I think Mandriva wants to get rid of its (by now, completely underserved) image of being a buggy distro, and using a well tested base for a tiny bit longer is one way of doing that. That kernel will serve most hardware just fine, BTW.
Now what does thát mean?
Undeserved, of course. 😳
The reviewer had a good point when he said Mandriva has the best rpm package manager, which in my opinion holds true. It’s indeed a great package manager, which is constantly improving!
Yes. Urpmi is quite good. But i have issues with it when using it in a chrooted environment. it randomly segfaults for god knows why.
that’s odd, we do this literally all the time (the MDV buildsystem uses chroots heavily). if you file a bug report with more info we could look into it.
“the best rpm package manager”
Maybe, maybe not
“a great package manager”
Naw, Portage is a great package manager with the same type of commands as urpmi, but way better dependency flow. I have tried both and I find Portage to be more flexible and consistent, but Hey, that’s just my opinion.
It’s been awhile and I’m not up to speed with Gentoo portage. If I may ask, how do you build KDE without kdeedu and kdetoys? I tried to put USE=”-kdeedu” and yet it stills build kdeedu with it.
As for urpmi, I have to say it’s rare that one can’t find a package with the great urpmi repos that we have in addition to main: contrib, plf, etc. And it certainly is faster than yum
There was a really good comparison article (yum, apt, urpmi, etc.) on lwn.net
This is the first distro that is working 100% for me. I have always had to jump through hoops to get one or more piece of hardware working, then after fixing hardware issues I would then have problems with getting programs working. I would solve one issue and that would just cause another and sooner than later my Linux partition would disappear from frustration because I couldn’t get everything I wanted to work. This distro changed this and it just plain works for me. I guess after I finish the MS Access program I am working on I can uninstall windows and buy a Power Pack. Looks like a good time for me to learn Mysql and PHP.
Thanks Team Mandriva!
I was wondering, what’s the status of NTFS Read/Write support in the latest Mandriva? Is the 3G driver included? Can read and write NTFS partitions without any dataloss?
ntfs-3g is included but not used by default. there’s notes on using it at:
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Releases/Mandriva/2007.1/Notes#Optional… and http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Releases/Mandriva/2007.1/NTFS_writing .
to me , a major headache installing mandriva was trying to install it into a lvm root system. ( headache as i was not able too, althouth the installer seemed to install fine, upon booting the system, it would kernel panic mounting the partitions )
of course, openSuse does it fine, Fedora also, Kubuntu i think so also, but not sure.
to me openSuse 10.2 is the best distro, and the only one to make me leave my pretty old gentoo.
mandriva is nice too in some points, but didnt like the GUI package manager. there are some usuability problems, that are major show stoppers.
havent tryed it much since then, but i wish all the luck to mandriva, hope they can get back into the top
I only wish they include the above in One. It complains missing ldap or samba plugins (don’t recall exactly). Imagine if you could install it a Windows AD or PDC style environment and be able to login right away? I keep my wish up.
Everything else works out-of-the-box (at least on this laptop) for me. Keep up the good work Mandriva!
When I attempted to install One, it didn’t even complete installation.