Trying Mandriva
The day before yesterday I had enough of my very slow computer at work. So I grabbed some new parts from our stock and assembled a new computer.
So yesterday was the day I wanted to use on installing the operating system on it. I first tried KUbuntu Gutsy, but that halted on ‘installing language pack’ in the gui-installer. I tried to resolve that, but did not succeed in it. I tried for a bit more but decided Gutsy was not the distro to use at this moment. Which is fine and understandable considering the current moment in their release schedule.
Feisty was not an option. I had enough of Feisty. The crippled Konqueror being one of the more irritating problems (showing no url-bar when using ctrl-n from an existing browser is just plain irritating). Also understandable considering they are working on Gutsy.
So, time to look for something not Kubuntu. I installed MEPIS. The current stable 6.5 is based on ubuntu Dapper, which is kind of old. So that was not what I wanted. So I tried upgrading to version 7. Ok. That was a big mistake. That one is based on Debian Stable, so the upgrade path was pretty rough. So rough, that I got in a dependency loop which I could not get out. The remaining option was to go to Debian Testing, but that would mean my computer would be a mess from the start. So I ended the day by deciding to install Debian Stable the next morning.
But that evening Helio pointed me to Mandriva. I decided this was the perfect moment to try that one out. I downloaded 2008(?) RC2 and booted from it this morning. All went fine and I wanted to install it. That did not succeed. The ‘one’ CD of RC2 does not contain an installer. On IRC I was advised to install 2007 Spring edition. Although I did not like to color, I decided to burn that CD and try it out.
I must say that it’s a good distro. I’m very impressed by the level of completeness and work on the details. The package application is very intuitive and the system configuration tool is very nice and very clear. Also the default style is very ok. I like the mouse busy cursor and it also seems like the artwork is changed on a lot of area’s by Mandriva. Which gave me a more consistent look and feel throughout the distro. For example OpenOffice.org looks much better than I’m used to, but booting it in a fraction of a second makes a big difference compared to my old pc.
I missed the tool for configuring the NVidia driver (which is great tool to setup TwinView in a few clicks). The people on IRC helped me to setup some Pinquin Liberation repository and that solved that issue. Also my sound does not seem to work, but that can wait until 2008 is released and installed. No need to invest time in it now.
So, for now I’m a happy Mandriva user (sorry Planet Kubuntu readers). I’m excited to see how the next couple of days at work will be. To be continued.
kipi-plugins will not compile if aRts is not installed. However, aRts is neither a required
dependency nor an optional dependency.
I tryed to do twice at once : download mandriva 2008 RC2 AND make my first metalink.
Well, after the second try, it downloaded completely, but after I avoided the md5sum check, I ran to K3B and rebooted.
But then, it wouldn’t end booting, freezing at about 75%. Gess I’ll have to donwload the normal way ^^
On the other hand, I have to agree that mandriva is a good distrib. I allways ended on mandriva, from the first time I installed linux in late 2005.
The two things that bother me are the slow mirrors I get, never managed to download rpm at more than 150kb/sec (when it’s about 600 with kubuntu), and the gtk control center (on my old laptop, I can realy see the diference between the qt-yast launching time and the gtk-mcc one, even if the content of the control center is great:)
hope you’ll enjoy Mandriva.
Kollum, an other happy Mandriva user
I’ve been using for a number of years (6 ?, since Mandrake 8.2 I believe), and I like really like it. Packages are pretty up to date, and it’s quite stable. Their default setup is KDE I think. Sometimes the rpm database gets locked … but not to often, and there are workarounds.
You can also try Opensuse 10.3, the artwork is not really impressive but is clean an polished, also they included some games from KDE4 in the default install (the svg artwork in mahjong look is impresive). Also they have configured to use the same style (qtcurve) in Gtk and KDE so all applications have the exact same look. With yast you can configure almost all the settings from a control panel.
Which I don’t like is that beagle is enabled by default. Managing rpms repositories is better that in previous versions, but still apt-get system is so *much* better in resolving conflicts, that this is the only serious thing that I miss from Kubuntu.
Compiz is installed but I don’t have tried it.
The Mandriva Live CD RC2 I looked at has an installer however I had to dig around in the menus to find it. Mayabe final will have it displayed on the desktop so it is easier for everyone to find?
I actually have the solution to the konq problem you were having – there was a config file that changed between different kubuntu versions (you probably upgraded to feisty rather than a fresh install) that causes the issue.
I can’t recall the name of the config file you need to delete (as I’m not at home), but the fix is that simple. I can look it up when I get home in order to help out all the kubuntu types that are looking for this answer via google one day down the road…
Cheers
I know there is a solution, but I do not understand why this is not automatically installed for the user.
I should not be bothered with deleting a config file somewhere on my system. I was completely up-to-date on feisty and they have the possibility to fix it if they want to.
yep, the installer is in RC2, the desktop link to it was just left out accidentally – you can just run ‘draklive-install’ as root to start it. The desktop link will be there in the final edition, of course.
Final is due early next week, or you can just install RC2 and update from Cooker repositories and you’ll more or less have 2008 final already.
Note that in 2008, the official Mandriva package for the NVIDIA driver includes the NVIDIA config tool, so you don’t need to use PLF any more (actually, the guy who used to maintain the NVIDIA and ATI drivers in PLF now maintains them in the official MDV repository, and for 2008, PLF won’t contain them at all).
thanks for the info, i will upgrade next week, when it’s out. I’m still very happy with Mandriva.
I started with Redhat 5 somthing moved to mandrake and never left the distro again.
It has a nice comunity, thy gave me VIP club membership couse of my kde work (thanks alot Madriva).
Ofcourse i tried several other distros, i dont think mandriva artwork is good, always thougt that suse is much more polished, But yast was always to slow for me. Kubuntu is very nice but I know how to solve things beter on my mandriva.