Earlier this week, Mandriva released Mandriva Linux 2008.0, the latest version of their flagship Linux distribution. Mandriva was so kind as to provide me with a copy of Mandriva Linux 2008.0 PowerPack, the commercial version. Back when it was named Mandrake, it was my first ever Linux distribution (I bought a Linux magazine), so I have always had a special place for Mandriva. Read on for a review.
The first version of Mandrake was a Red Hat derivative – Red Hat 5.1, to be specific. It used KDE 1.0 (KDE 1.0 looked like this), and was released in 1998. It soon gathered a name for itself as a very user friendly distribution, which was in part due to the advent of the drakxtools, a set of tools to configure the various pieces of hardware in a computer.
Mandrake Linux 8.1 (Vitamin) was my first experience with Linux, six years ago in 2001 (KDE looked like this by then). I had just bought a new computer, and was one of the earlier adopters of Windows XP. Interested in a bit of adventure, I decided to buy a magazine with a Linux disk attached. It was mostly an act on impulse, but I am quite happy I acted on impulse back then. I had a great time with Mandrake 8.1 – although I do recall a few problems during installation. Strangely, I distinctively recall playing LBreakout for hours on end (with Nelly Furtado’s “Whoa! Nelly” in my CD player, by the way, from back when she was still making good music).
I’ve been using Linux ever since. Not Mandrake – Debian and Ubuntu, mostly, with the odd installation of SUSE here and there. Mandrake kind of seemed to lose its focus during the 9.x days, and I simply did not like it anymore. During the 10.x days, things were not getting much better, and by that time (late 2004) Ubuntu started its rise to the top. I adopted Ubuntu (or Kubuntu, depending on my DE mood), and have been using it as ‘my’ Linux distribution ever since – and overall, I am still quite happy with it.
That does not mean I do not try a different distribution every now and then, of course. So, when Mandriva offered me a review copy of their PowerPack, I went for it. I installed Mandriva on my Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, which has the following specifications:
- Intel Pentium M 1.74Ghz
- 1.5GB of DDR2 RAM
- Ati Radeon x300 with 128MB of dedicated RAM
- 40GB HDD
- Broadcom 4318 wireless chip (the revision from hell)
I opted for the KDE installation, as I consider KDE to be Mandriva’s ‘native’ desktop environment, and therefore, find it the best way to judge Mandriva.
I do not like dwelling on installation procedures for too long, but there are a few remarks I would like to make. Mandriva’s installation program has always been its strength, and in this release, it is no different. The Mandriva guys have struck the perfect balance between configurability and ease-of-use, meaning both power users as well as novices will find their way through Mandriva’s installation procedure. The installer also noted me I could use the closed-source Ati driver (no way, the open source one is much better for my card), and it let me choose between the ‘native’ bcm43xx driver or ndiswrapper (more on that later).
Mandriva 2008.0 comes with interesting artwork too. The new background image, used in the GRUB menu, kdm, and the actual desktop, has a helix-shaped group of stick figures – these stick figures also make up KDE’s boot splash. It all fits together, and adds a nice touch. I wish I could be as positive about the default theme too, but I really cannot. I do not like Mandriva’s theme (Ia Ora) at all. This is of course an extremely personal issue, and not a big one at that; themes are easily changed (Plastik, in my case). And let’s face it, is there anyone who really likes the brownish orange-y stuff Ubuntu uses?
Mandriva installs the latest version of KDE, 3.5.7, with a whole boatload of applications to boot. For browsing, Mandriva opted to default to Firefox. When in a KDE environment, I prefer Konqueror not only because it integrates better graphically, but also because Konqueror loads itself much faster than Firefox does. On top of that, in KDE I use a Mac OS X-like menubar atop the screen, and Firefox does not respect that decision.
Since this is the PowerPack edition of Mandriva, it also comes with a lot of non-free applications installed by default, including something like LinDVD, a commercial DVD player for Linux. Sadly, it appears to be written in Gtk+ 1.x, and looks like total ass. Java is installed by default, just like RealPlayer, Skype, Flash, and so on.
For the rest, Mandriva comes with all the usual suspects you come to expect from a KDE-based distribution, but still, a few peculiar decisions have been made – decisions which show the dual nature of Mandriva (ship both GNOME and KDE). For instance, instead of the perfectly capable Krita, Mandriva ships The GIMP for the heavier image editing work. Here we obviously enter a discussion which has reared its ugly head on OSNews more than once before: should you mingle Gtk+ and Qt applications on a Linux system? My personal answer is “no”, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the aforementioned menubar issue. KDE is really, really cool in that it allows for a Mac OS X-like menubar – something GNOME can only do with an unoffical patch to Gtk+. In other words, if you switch to a Gtk+ application in KDE, the menubar will move back to the Gtk+ window, instead of being atop the screen where it belongs (if you enabled that option, of course). This is major consistency issue for me, and I really wish the GNOME/Gtk+ guys will finally get around to fixing this issue, so that the KDE developers can then devise a way of adapting Gtk+ applications running in KDE accordingly.
Secondly, there is the graphical consistency issue, something made worse in Mandriva, because when you change themes in Mandriva (like I did, to Plastik) the Gtk+ theme does not switch along (Gtk+ apps still sport the Ia Ora look) – something it is supposed to do. The Gtk+ settings panel in the KDE Control Center (the GTK-Qt theme engine) does not appear to be present in Mandriva – it is not installed by default, for whatever reason. After installing it, everything worked fine. This is really something that ought to be installed by default in a distribution that aims to include both Qt as well as Gtk+ applications.
The graphical inconsistency issue also extends towards the layout of menus and buttons. GNOME and KDE applications have their own layouts, and mixing those is confusing. All in all, I wish that Mandriva would just install Qt applications only when I order it to do a KDE Desktop installation. This would become problematic, since the drakxtools are written in Gtk+.
Speaking of the drakxtools, or Mandriva Control Center, it are still a fine collection of system management tools. Ok, so they are written in Gtk+, but let us forget that for a while. There is another, more pressing problem with these tools: they are mostly ‘wizard’ based. They guide you step-by-step through configuration screens, only allowing you to edit one type of setting at a time. This is really, really annoying: give me a proper configuration dialog for crying out loud, where I can edit whatever I setting I want. Being more dialog-centered also forces you to keep the amount of options to a minimum. Something for the future, maybe.
On to a proper, annoying bug. As you could see in my rundown of specifications of my laptop, it uses a bcm4318 wireless chip. The 43xx chips in general are a pain in the behind in Linux, but to make matters worse, the 4318 may be the worst of all. Where many of the bcm43xx chips work just fine with the native Linux driver, my 4318 simply does not. It works sometimes for hours on end, and then it will not work for another few hours, dropping connections, being really slow, or simply not connecting at all. This is not a Mandriva issue; it happens in Ubuntu too. Hence, in Ubuntu, I use ndiswrapper, which does work fine.
Sadly, not so in Mandriva 2008.0. The network drakxtool refuses to properly configure ndiswrapper. It will install the driver, but when that is done, and it tries to load ndiswrapper with that driver, it simply refuses to, with a really annoying error message (shown below).
I could not get it fixed. I tried it the die hard way, via the CLI, but no good. And yes, I have thought of the obvious things like blacklisting the native driver (heck, I even removed it), but all to no avail. Quite annoying, as I do not have wireless now under Mandriva.
There are a lot of what I call ‘polish bugs’ (note how ‘polish’ is one of the few words in English that change its meaning by merely capitalising the first letter). Mandriva comes with either Compiz or Metisse, and this is easily set up using the Mandrake Control Center. I opted for Compiz Fusion (Metisse is a bit too… Weird for my tastes), and it works just fine. It is just that I use the Expo plugin a lot, which I want to enable via the top left screencorner – but that is a no go. Even though the option is correctly set, the hotcorner does not work. Very annoying. Another minor bug is that the Kerry search tool does not respect the shortcut key combination it uses (alt+space). A minor bug, but annoying still.
There are more of these types of bugs. That KDE bootsplash I talked about earlier, sometimes turns black when loading KDE. My laptop’s volume/play/etc keys do not work (they work fine in Ubuntu). X does not seem to respect the set mouse cursor theme very well. And so on.
All those small bugs contribute to my overall impression of Mandriva 2008.0: a good, solid distribution, with an excellent installation routine, decent configuration tools, but with quite a few polish issues that they need to work on. The underpinnings are definitely there, and if you are not a total consistency idiot like me, Mandriva is simply a solid distribution, which offers the best of both GNOME and KDE, and comes packed with a whole boatload of software. In addition, even though I do not particularly like it, it is one of the few (only?) major distributions that facilitates the installation and use of Metisse, the other 3D desktop (that is not a 3D desktop).
Software title: Mandriva Linux 2008
Publisher: Mandriva
Price: depends on version (free-39 EUR)
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Thom,
Thanks for taking the time to review Mandriva 2008.0.
Been some time since I saw a review of Mandriva on this website
I am an avid user of Mandriva and find it the best when it comes to combining an easy-to-use desktop with options for experts.
I believe the draktools especially the partitioner to be one of the best.
I think there still is a big role Mandriva can play in the desktop space.
Regards
Gireesh
Thanks for the review, Thom. I can’t find any argument with your criticism, though if you file bugs on the issues we’ll certainly look at them. In particular you’re right about the problem with switching from native to ndiswrapper drivers, it’s really a pain that doesn’t work. It’s something I’m definitely going to ensure is fixed for 2008.1, and 2008 too if it can be fixed with an update. The good side is that bcm43xx really does work for most Broadcom chips now.
I’m a bit surprised you say you tried removing the module entirely and it *still* didn’t work, though – that should fix it. Did you reboot or modprobe -r bcm43xx after removing the module?
Very nice-looking screenshots. Looks like Thom has changed the default position of the titlebar buttons — a good move, IMO. I usually change also the colour of the titlebar to a darker shade of blue — this is quite easy to do in KDE.
Thom has also removed the bottom-left menu button and added a top-left menu button. I usually remove the menu button altogether and assign a keyboard shortcut to invoke the application menu. I also assign keyboard shortcuts (Shift+F1, Shift+F2…) to start my most often used applications. Then you don’t need to clutter the panel with application icons. Having two panels (one at the top and another at the bottom) seems like an excess to me.
You could try terminus fonts for Konsole, they look nicer. Does Mandriva have terminus fonts?
Congrats to Mandriva for a new release. Personally I prefer Debian and I don’t plan to try Mandriva 2008.0 at this time.
“Does Mandriva have terminus fonts?”
Yup. Package name is terminus-font . In the contrib repository.
It’s certainly nice that Mandriva makes the terminus fonts available via its contrib repository. However, it would be even nicer if you included them in your default installation.
IMHO, terminus fonts are the best terminal fonts available, both for tty’s and for X terminals. Terminus fonts are the default fonts in Debian’s “console-setup” utility that sets up tty’s easily for different locales.
http://packages.debian.org/etch/console-setup
I prefer Vera / DejaVu monospace, honestly. Don’t much like terminus.
I prefer Vera / DejaVu monospace, honestly. Don’t much like terminus.
I can respect your preference. Still, that’s a poor reason to exclude terminus fonts from the default installation of Mandriva — some users might have different preferences than you. Of course, it’s eventually your choice but I’d just like to point out that there might be users who prefer the terminus fonts, like me. Adding the terminus fonts wouldn’t eat much additional disk space, I think.
Well, in theory, there is at least *one* user who likes every font in existence, otherwise they wouldn’t exist. Should we therefore include every font in the distro in the default install?
Well, I for one think it is a great idea to blend QT and GTK+ applications. With one (but very important) caveat: The developers must make sure that QT and GTK+ applications are as consistent as possible. This is easier with QT4 and GTK+2 than QT3 and GTK+2.
And considering the unified menubar in KDE in Mandriva they probably should’ve used the unofficial GTK+ patch (which btw. works fine for most apps). But I’m afraid hell freezes over before the GTK+-devs will incorporate an option for unified menubars.
We don’t use the unified menubar by default. Thom chose to use it on his own.
The Mandriva default theme, Ia Ora, is implemented for both GTK+ and Qt, so applications in the two toolkits look very consistent by default.
Hmm… could you offer an alternative GTK+-build incorporating the unofficial patches for GTK+ in case somebody wants a unified menubar in KDE? Or would that require two sets of all GTK+-applications?
Not demanding anything, merely curious (or how it is spelled)
EDIT: Oh btw. Does the unified menubar in KDE by any chance work with the unified menubar in Etoilé? :p
Edited 2007-10-12 01:17 UTC
I don’t think apps would have to be rebuilt. It’d be possible, I believe, but Fred (our GNOME / GTK+ maintainer) has a well known lack of interest in such experimental things, so he probably wouldn’t do it. It’d need a community contributor to be interested in it, and AFAIK none of our regular contributors is. There’s no technical reason it wouldn’t be possible, though, I don’t think.
Hmm… could you offer an alternative GTK+-build incorporating the unofficial patches for GTK+ in case somebody wants a unified menubar in KDE? Or would that require two sets of all GTK+-applications?
That wouldn’t work, no. At least last time I checked, the GTK+ patch for a top menubar was an ugly hack. It won’t play nice with KDE’s top menubar (unless you patch that with another ugly hack).
Recently, the OS X GTK+ port introduced integration with Mac’s top menubar. If someone tried to implement something like that to integrate GTK+ apps better on KDE/X11 and GNUstep/X11, it would probably be merged on GTK+’s official tree.
Hmm.. sounds like something to do at freedesktop.org – an open standard for unified menubars and/or detachable menues (for GNUstep)?
Aahh yes. The unified menubar for GTK+/Gnome is in part an applet for gnome-panel (just checking up). That won’t work (unless you somehow swallow the applet inside kicker or sumthen like that – sounds like BIG_UGLY_HACK_SO_BREAK_ME_PLEASE).
“KDE is really, really cool in that it allows for a Mac OS X-like menubar – something GNOME can only do with an unoffical patch to Gtk+. In other words, if you switch to a Gtk+ application in KDE, the menubar will move back to the Gtk+ window, instead of being atop the screen where it belongs”
Now I remember again, that is why I stopped using that bar… Firefox and some other program-thingies refused to play nice with it; quite a shame really
Edited 2007-10-12 05:46
Is Cedega still included in the powerpack?
Best to say it’s *back* in the Powerpack
. It was in 2007.0, out of 2007.1, but yes, it’s back in 2008.
That’s good news. With a starting 3 mnds subscription?
There is an Errata page where the problem about ndiswrapper combined with the bcm43xx devices is listed.
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Releases/Mandriva/2008.0/Errata
What is says is simple: blacklist the device in /etc/modprobe.conf by adding
blacklist bcm43xx
—EDIT—
This actually does not work according to AdamW, so try his suggestion, see comment below.
—***—
Cheers!
Edited 2007-10-12 07:28
actually, that one doesn’t work, as far as the testing people have done for me has indicated. i’ve yet to get around to updating it.
note that the native bcm43xx driver works for everyone else I know of who’s tried it in 2008, about 10 people. Seems only Thom’s particular chipset has a problem with it. So this should not be a problem for most people with Broadcom chips, it should be possible to use it with the bcm43xx driver after following the instructions at http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Releases/Mandriva/2008.0/Notes#Required… .
Well, I have a bcm43xx card laying around somewhere (USRobotics MaxG) for my old laptop (an Acer Travelmate). In the past, I never got it to work with ndiswrapper in Mandriva 2006, nor 2007.0, except for 5 seconds before dropping out again.
I’ll give it a try and report here – but that will be for the weekend. It’s good to see that about 10 people actually got it working.
the native driver basically sucked up until around kernel 2.6.20. it started being actually usable at that point.
i should mention that i personally have a bcm4312 in my laptop, and it’s fine with bcm43xx in 2008.
Yup, it’s strictly related to the bcm4318 chipset. It’s the revision from hell, I tell you.
Yes, tried to install 2008 Free, and could not get SIS onboard graphics to work. Also all kinds of errors on reboot – and no, didn’t do anything fancy, just took the default install. As in the past. Life is too short for this stuff, so put in Etch while my user’s patience still held up. Went in and worked just fine.
2006 had worked fine. 2007 had failed to install properly on three separate different machines, one of which I took to Suse and two to Debian. 2007.1 I passed on. 2008 does this, admittedly only on one machine.
Life is too short. Others will probably have much happier experiences, but this is the end of my own interest in Mandriva. Which, sadly, I always used to be really enthusiastic about.
Funny… my desktop machine has a SIS gfx-chipset (my Laptop has a CLE266 card), too and does (both do) work perfectly with 2008. Did you make sure that you did not get a bad burn or corrupt download by accident?
1. The gtk-qt-engine package is not installed by default because of some instabilities issues reported by some users. It was considered safer to not ship it by default. Of course users acan still install it.
2. the drakxtools have a wizard approach because most of them can be launched in CLI without X. So they need to fit in a small console screen. This is a minor tradeoff for a very usefull features, especially for sysadmins.
3. I guess that the bootsplash begins to turn black after you have enable Compiz ?
4. for Expo, check that the package compiz-fusion-plugins-extra is installed, and that ccp is loaded for compiz :
ps -fe | grep compiz
5. Whereas LinDVD is an ugly gtk+1 application, it’s the only _legal_ way to play encrypted DVD, especially in the United States ( DMCA ).
Whereas LinDVD is an ugly gtk+1 application, it’s the only _legal_ way to play encrypted DVD, especially in the United States ( DMCA ).
Right. As long as it plays my DVD’s i couldn’t care less how the player looks. And it did play “The Condemned” as it should.
Just a word to say I enjoyed the review. I did the opposite of the OS, as I installed the Free version, with only Gnome & Gtk apps. All good, but it was on a desktop, so I can’t comment about any wireless problems…
I think Mandriva is climbing back in the distro charts, and this release is better than its Suse counterpart.
One strange thing : I can’t manage to have my “Gmail notifier” connecting on Firefox in Mandriva, while it works perfectly well in Fedora, Debian and others… Strange…
heh, my first distro was redhat 5.2
I think a big selling issue for Mandriva is that they have paid-for codecs so that all your multimedia needs are covered out of the box.
Of course, this can be done in other distributions with a few mouse clicks (Ubuntu) or more mouse clicks (Suse requires the uninstallation of their crippled kaffeine, amarok and xine and the installation of packman’s kaffeine, amarok and libxine).
But in the ease of use department for a new user, having codecs work out of the box is miles ahead in importance than the fact that they use the best application for the task, irrespective of which toolkit was used to write it.
In fact, most windows users are very much used to having all kinds of applications use all kinds of layout, widgets and toolkits, so I doubt that that is a major issue for them.
Overall, this was a good review, although I would have liked to hear a bit more about stability, responsiveness of the system and urpmi, which I hear has been improved even further in this release.
or more mouse clicks (Suse requires the uninstallation of their crippled kaffeine, amarok and xine and the installation of packman’s kaffeine, amarok and libxine).
Actually that’s not true for OS10.3. I clicked on a mp3, kaffeine launched, told me it lacked codecs and gave me a link. When you click on it it takes you to a help page with one of SuSE’s meta-package links (does anyone else use them? They’re great), that then was busy for about 20mins installing uncrippled media players, java, flash and all the other stuff.
It’s really great.
Unfortunately SuSE’s still dooooooog slooooowwwww compared to other distros. So back to PCLinuxOS
Compare that to my Mandrake experience:
1. Download page needs JS, I hate those pages.
2. After activating it and selecting the first download link I get a 404
3. The third works but stalls half way through.
4. You Fail.
Edited 2007-10-12 17:17
I just tested the download page. The first link in the list is to the Austrian server, http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/linux/Mandrakelinux/official/iso/2008.0 . I checked, and this download worked correctly.
The FTP / HTTP mirrors are under heavy load at the moment. It’s a better idea to use the BitTorrent downloads, which are linked right there on the downloads page.
I was talking of the powerpack which sells for 35 €, which is what Thom was reviewing here.
Thom, there are *many* words in English that change meaning by capitalization, eg:
english (spin on cueball) English (odd island-dweller)
bush (I’ll leave that one alone) Bush (and that too)
chad (of the famous hanging type) Chad (African country)
turkey (me, usually) Turkey (fascinating country)
frank (open, as in frank source) Frank (Rhine crosser)
nice (pleasant) Nice (pleasant city)
joe (coffee) Joe (like Little Joe of Bonanza)
But polish/Polish does have one distinction. It not only changes meaning, but also pronunciation.
Mandrake was also my introduction to Linux. Although I no longer use it, it’s nice to see it returning to what it does best, putting out an easy-to-use and well thought-out desktop distribution.
on my machine almost everything worked except broadcom (I have tried with the native driver and it did work for a while before it dropped the connection).
Skype didn’t work, seems to be missing some qt libraries.
Google earth, guessing the same libraries.
anything else worked great, the LinDVD player I think is bad because you can only change the region 5? times, and I do have some foreign moves with a diffrent region.
But this is easly fixed with vlc.
I still think it’s a great distro worth paying for.
btw. I have a HP pavillion dvXXXX something laptop. amd x64
Edited 2007-10-12 13:07
The only thing stopping me from moving to Mandriva now is the lack of multiple screen support. I just want a simple tool that detects the second screen attached to the laptop and configures it automatically. Seriously, that’s the only thing. It’s 2007 so do not ask me to edit any configuration file. I don’t edit the registry on Windows – technology has moved on.
I say this because I’ve been testing many (and I do mean many) Linux and BSD distros to move away from Windows. The only thing that’s remotely close to a usable system is Mandriva. I loved it back in April and now even more with the new release. Ubuntu is very clunky in comparison.
What graphics card do you have?
If Intel, try this at a console:
xrandr –auto
If NVIDIA, try using:
nvidia-settings
If ATI, try using:
aticonfig
What I am curious about, is whether there are enough reasons to buy the Power Pack edition. Are their tools in it, that I can’t get in another distro for free? Enabling the universe, and multiverse repos in Ubuntu, will get me over 23,000 software packages. I believe Gentoo has about the same. I saw where Cedega might be included, and I have that already. It works wonders on the new releases, but I’ve got tons of old games, that refuse to work on it. I’m just trying to see the benefits of switching over to Mandriva, from any other distro.
besides CeDeGA, LinDVD, you have a ton of software in DVD format, so less to donload.
And you get the manual (if you get the boxed version).
And you get to make sure Mandriva continues existing, by paying them for their services.
Yes, you can use Mandriva paying nothing. But others feel like giving them some moneyfor their work is a fair thing.
Peace!
Cedega, LinDVD and the Fluendo codecs are the banner benefits of the PowerPack edition. I think there’s some other commercial stuff on there too, I don’t have a package list handy right at the moment though.
I installed KDE One on my avarage ThinkPad R50 and was able to keep it fer approximately one hour. I noticed some glitches (for example – all windows got transparent after suspend to RAM). But my general complaint is about how it looks. I have bad luck with getting good fonts on Mandriva and I experienced the same with PCLOS. Whatever fonts I try and whatever settings I use – everything looks like crap. On SuSE and Debian fonts look great. Why there are problems with Mandriva? Moreover, why Mandriva has so cheap bootsplash – ir looks kind of unfocused. Is it that hard to make one that is a bit sharper. In spite of the fact that I like how Mandriva preforms, it is not my distro of choice. Yes, I think that new openSuSE release is much better.
Just my 2 cents.
Just to mention:
I was trying up to now a x64 distro with an e6400 intel…
Ubuntu fail with a lot os issues, some others too etc..
The only one working right out of the box is this one! Mandriva !
Probably (I am not certain) it’s because it is not a full 64 bit distro but it’s at my opinion a very good move from Madriv’s people, ti mix both environments.
I can now on my desktop use some 32 or 64 bit logs without having the question; will it run ?…
Just for this it worth to try Mandriva and give it a chance…
Just about all of the x86-64 editions of Mandriva is x86-64 native. The only major bit that’s not is OpenOffice.org, the x86-64 build of OO.o has been experimental for a long time. We may make the x86-64 build default on x86-64 machines in 2008.1.
But yes, you can install x86-32 apps and libraries alongside x86-64 ones where you have a need to, MDV is designed to make this possible.
this open a point that I don’t understand.
Mandriva come to have some inventive (inovatives?) and or try some ways to improve our way of seeing linux. (it’s a point of vue).
But when you go to the main site mandriva, even the new one, you don’t see or feel that way!
How many clic to get an info or even download ? 6 pages to buy the new version 2008!
4 to get the wiki, 5 for the forum, it’s even just in 800×600….
Even to get the infos about the new club advantages ?where ?
Mandriva, please, show more what you are!
Um, are we looking at the same site?
One click to get to the download page. One to get to information about One, Powerpack or Flash. One to buy the Powerpack (click the big orange ‘download’ link in front of Powerpack). Two to get to the Wiki (Community, Mandriva Wiki). Two to get to the forum (Community, forums). I don’t know what you mean about 800×600, the forum site uses phpBB so it doesn’t matter what your resolution is.
While the review was okay, to me it comes off biased. Themes and personal preference items while good for side commentary shouldn’t be considered when reviewing a distribution, because those item have no bearing on how well the system works with your hardware or the how well the applications meet your needs. The overall look of the distribution is worth mentioning, but lets just leave it at I like the look or I don’t, but it’s easily modified. Also, if you know you have a piece of hardware that is unlikely to work(in almost all distibutions), how can you hold it against the distro especially when they’ve set up specific instructions on a wiki to try to help users get around the problem. If windows isn’t expected to meet this requirment, why should Mandriva be held to that standard. No distro can be all things for every user’s hardware. As the owner of a Thinkpad T60, I’ve got to say that Mandriva 2008 is great for Thinkpads. I have Intel/ATI hardware components and everything works out of the box with no configuration changes. In the past two days I’ve installed openSUSE 10.3 and Mandriva and while I was very impressed with openSUSE 10.3 Mandriva deintely edges it out. openSUSE has frame buffer issues when you try to install the latest ATI proprietary drivers and requires you to modify the Boot menulistto have any chance of it working wit the 1XXX chipsets. Everything else in openSUSE worked fairly well, but it’s just not as polished as Mandriva. Fonts, configuration tools and the install process are all componets that are implemented with more polish in mandriva. I’ve used openSUSE 10.2 for the past year and i really liked it, but Mandriva 2008 has convinced me to come back to my roots. I wish Lenovo would release it’s Thinkvantage tools for all linux distributions instead of just SLED/openSUSE 10.2, becasue they’re very useful. I’m happy to see mandriva get the publcity the review will provide, but I’m still waiting for a review that avoids mentioning Ubuntu and get to the root of whether or not an individual believes that Mandriva is a disto that will allow Linux users to be more productive than they were with last years group of disributions on the hardware and software fronts. Perhaps I’ve used Linux long enough to know how to not hold it against a distro if it isn’t OSX (designed for a specific piece of hardware) out of the box. I wish evryone would have a more open mind with linux reviews that don’t include Ubuntu in the title.
Edited 2007-10-13 03:02
I didn’t have the opportunity to test Mandriva fully as it wouldn’t boot on my desktop system where I have a spare partition for occasional distribution testing but one detail that caught my eye with the livecd was that it doesn’t respect my language choice I made in Grub. With Ubuntu and openSUSE the configuration/installation dialogues use the language selected in Grub by default while Mandriva switches back to English (although the language pack was available).
It’s small details like this that make one distro feel more polished than the other.
Your distribution is very nice. But why I can’t still configure my ADSL modem (pppoe)?
With most other distros I can.
You can, drakconnect has an ADSL connection type. Did you try it?
Of course I did, Adam, but for some unknown reason it doesn’t work. Same problem with the 2007 edition, got better with 2007 Spring.
Is the powerpack boxed version released yet?
Hard to get here in the netherlands 🙁
Mandriva 2008.0 rocks ! I’m writing this from a MDV 2008.0 box !