“While it’s not my distribution of choice, Mandriva 2006 definitely has some serious allure to new and experienced desktop Linux users alike. It’s dead easy to install, a breeze to use and configure, has enough applications included to keep even the most die-hards happy, and it’s got overwhelming support from the company and community at large.” Read more here.
First Look at Mandriva 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
first look at Mandrive 2006? wasnt there News posted about Mandriva last week or so? , should be renamed to ” another Review of Mandriva 2006″
Finding the FTP would be nice. But NO!~ well lets set back and see if this mandriva linux does wot it’s saids it’s goingto do. I think it’s going to fall behind. Now I’m sure wot I say don’t realy matter right. Like wot they ask’ed Mr Albert Einstein ” Albert wot you would like to become”. He saids” It does not ( matter )
Mandriva artwork has always been aweful and I wouldn’t myself touch it. It worked great on my mums machine for a year with very limited packages and hard to find repos. Also startup time is bad with tons of services, it took well over a minute to boot on my mums machine. My mums on Slackware-10.2/Dropline GNOME-2.12.1 which is more suitable once setup.
And I like it very much.
The only thing not working out of the box is my TV tuner card. The reason for this is the stupidity of the manufacturers, who put the SAME indentification string into DIFFERENT subtypes of cards.
All other apps I need can be installed either directly from the disk or from a contrib repository mirror.
The special apps I need are:
– DeCSS and Xine for watching my DVDs
– Audacity for simple music editing (I sing in a chorus)
– Lilypond for music notation (also for the chorus)
– Hugin for making a panorama from multiple images
What else is used on this computer:
– An anonymous ftp server for letting my friends download photos without messing around with passwords
– Latex for some text layout
– OpenOffice.org 2.0, for spreadsheets and presentations
– KDETV for watching TV (I liked domino day really much)
– QCAD for occasional technical drawings
– And of course e-mail and web browsing.
Well, it was really easy to install, but updateing is painfull. I have not yet updated anything, but was forced to create some account somewhere. That stinks…
It stinks, you have to pay for updates. Huh!
Looks like there is no other way to activate that.
Oh great Redmond, you give us at least the updates for free…
debian, slackware and *BSD rulez
No, you don’t. Run MandrivaUpdate and rejoice. It’s on the menus. The only thing that costs money is Mandriva Online, which is an update notification / auto-install service.
Yeah easy to install, easy to use, painfull updating and matches like this one: In the first wizard you choose not to send any hardware information, but during updates config you are forced to send them. What the *uck is that?
So what’s your distribution of choice?
The reason for this is the stupidity of the manufacturers, who put the SAME indentification string into DIFFERENT subtypes of cards.
Yeah. I once bought a TV Tuner card too, and of course carefully checked if Linux supported this card– it said it did, and when it didn’t work, I got all pissed off about it. Then I took a deep breath and delved deeper into the matter, and I reached the same conclusion as you did. Cheap hardware $^@$^6!#)$.
It was kinda funny because I’m very conservative when it comes to messing with the hardware of my trusty x86 desktop machine; it has remained virtually the same since I bought it; I did upgrade the videocard and RAM, but that was very shortly after I bought it. After those two, the machine stayed the same for 3 years to ensure 100% compatibility with various operating systems. So, I thought I’d take a deep dive and get a new piece of hardware– and that adventure ensured that my x86 desktop machine will now stay as it is for another 4 years to come
.
Edited 2005-11-21 11:25
I have just installed Mandriva 2006 PowerPack, I installed it in a HP Pavillion zv5000la (PIV, 3.0Ghz, 1 GB RAM), I used a 80GB external USB hard disk, and THIS is a very important point, as before I tried to install Fedora Core 4 but it did not recognized the USB2 disk.
Mandriva 2006 instead, installed without complain. I have been a fan of Mandrake since version 6.0. And, although the 2006 distro is great, there is something I do not like.
In the review, on the second page int he section “Easy URPMI…”, it may be easy for the author, and for me, to modify the config files using vim and the console, but I will never try to tell my father to do that, it is not convenient. So far all the reviews I have seen tell that URPMI is a great application and that you can get any application you want typing “urpmi xxxxxx”, but I repeat again, a “lowest denominator” end user wont do that, and I find it difficult to know what “xxxxxxx” is for each package.
I have the PowerPack DVD, but I have NO internet connection in my house so all the software I have is there… I find the “Package Installer” application not very useful.
So the problem here is not with Mandriva, but you not having a net connection to add more rpm repos.
the nice thing about urpmi is that you can access the same settings from rpmdrake.
hell, you can have someone you know burn out the contrib repository on a dvd or something add that into the urpmi/rpmdrake config using a gui. and then if you use the rpmdrake install gui you should find all the packages thats available on said dvd.
this even allows one to burn update cd/dvd sets for users so that they dont have to go online on a slow connection to do a secuirty update. i would love to see microsoft make it this easy to do the same
this even allows one to burn update cd/dvd sets for users so that they dont have to go online on a slow connection to do a secuirty update. i would love to see microsoft make it this easy to do the same
Really?
#1
1. Go to Windows Update
2. Find and click “Windows Update Catalog” link in options/settings (note: it is not the “Windows Catalog” link at the top of the page!!!)
3. Select your OS (ie. Windows 2000 sp3) and type of updates (ie. all, critical, security..)
4. Review updates
4. Select folder to download to (ie. c: empmyupdates) and download them all.
#2
Try WSUS. It’s free download from MS and works just great if you want to distribute patches/updates through a network.
Please, if you’re going to trash Windows, do it the right way.
can windows.update update realplayer, openoffice, firefox?
javajazz
you still have to install every one of them manualy in the right order. with urpmi one can feed the media to the system and tell it to update all packages.
and why should i have to go hunt down yet another tool when they could have put it into the os from day one?
oh, and from the looks of it, wsus requre win2k or win2k3 server versions to run it on. no wonder they can give it away free
in theory i could set up a system that wgets the latest updates, creates a iso from it. and then if someone brings their own media i can burn them a new update disc…
hmm, could even build a update kiosk based around that concept…
Edited 2005-11-21 16:07
Package installer is not very useful
I found it much more pleasant, even my mum does (she is no way asociated with computers, she just uses them), to write apt-get install something or apt-get upgrade (update is run automaticaly on startup), than to find application after minutes of searching…
type “urpmi something”, then. You don’t have to use the GUI, just like you don’t have to use aptitude.
to me suse is everything mandriva wants to be. as both distros fall into the categories of ‘mainstream’ friendly linux.
it would be nice if someone cound point some advantages of mandriva over suse.
hm or what about, mandriva is everythings suse wanst to be.
What are suse advantages ?
ubuntu is everything mandriva and suse want to be.
what are mandriva and suse advantages?
At least one is to be found: Mandriva is 10x faster installed. YAST is insane and slow. Try that on pentium system with about 64MBs of ram, I dont hope m2006 would run on that, but 10.0 in text mode did. Suse 9.2 was installed after 10 hours of YAST doing something (probably important). The main reason Novell choose suse is that since netware version 5.0 the biggest CPUtime killer is the installer, same is on SUSE, after install it (9.2) could be run on 32MBs ram also.
I’m using cooker (the devel edition of mandriva/mandrake) from some years. It’s a very-easy-to-use distribution.
I use many linux os into my servers, centos, tao linux, debian and gentoo too, but for daily usage on my laptop, mandriva is the best choice that I have found.
Even the unstable version (cooker) is stable enough for my needs. I can find all software from urpmi repository (CONTRIB and PLF – http://plf.zarb.org/ are super!) and the installation is easy with urpmi.
I use cooker only because I can use the latest software with no pain
(KDE 3.5, Gimp 2.3.5, Wine 0.9.1, Qemu 0.7.2, etc…)
I’m not an anti Linux guy, I have the feeling something is not going right. The latest Mandriva comes with OpenOffice 1.1.5, why not 2.0?. As a win user, I’am better served staying with my win box!
i looked in the repository a couple of weeks ago and there is office 2 alongside 1.5. I uninstalled 1.5 and installed 2. Easy as that.
javajazz
here: http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=472&slide=2…
The mods have been busy deleting posts, nice website for freedom of speech. Oh wait it’s a american run website thats why.
… that Mandriva linux has the best internationalized distro around. It supports many languages, not only with translation but with many unicode fonts and aspell dictionaries, site translations etc…
They have a very talanted and kind staff that works on this i18n (Pablo Saratxaga) whom I owe most part of my linux localization knowledge.
Mandriva was the first to ship aspell 6.0 with my own language file I was working on, and it was a very good surprise for me. It was the first distro even to try to localize their stuff to our and other minority languages (Azerbaijani in this case).
So, thanks again Mandriva, keep up the great work!
Edited 2005-11-21 15:18
Huh, odd one of the complaints is no right click menu to uncompress files. Its there by default in KDE, its the only method I use to decompress stuff.
There is no context option for that in Mandriva 2006/KDE… same was true for 2005. In GNOME it works by default. If you’ve added kde-tools (or whatever it’s called) then you have the context options. This review was covering an “out of the box” config in that respect and is dead on accurate. I’ve seen it on all Mandriva installs.
Where did you get the idea that you have the freedom/right to say whatever you want and it not being deleted/edited on a web site?
The owner of a web site can do whatever they want. If you don’t like it, leave. You have no right!!
There’s a pre-release (m129) version of OO.o 2.0 in contrib and on the Powerpack; package name openoffice.org-go-ooo (because it’s based on the go-ooo build of OpenOffice). There’s a final version of 2.0 available to Club members (and you get a month’s free Club membership if you buy a pack).
Anonymous – Eugenia runs Arch for her Linux distro, but mostly these days she uses OS X, I believe.
Well, it was really easy to install, but updateing is painfull. I have not yet updated anything, but was forced to create some account somewhere. That stinks…
It stinks, you have to pay for updates. Huh!
Looks like there is no other way to activate that.
Oh great Redmond, you give us at least the updates for free…
debian, slackware and *BSD rulez
No need to sign up or pay.
Go to http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ and follow the 3 easy steps. Select mirrors closest to you.
After that you get all the updates.
Some software is released first to club members but all recommended/critical updates are mirrored everywhere.
Have fun.
I was sure that there is a way, but when everithing is wizardified, I’m amazed why there is no checkbox to turn that thing on.
I found it much more pleasant,…, to write apt-get install something
And that’s so much better than writing urpmi something, right?
VPN is a must for most users these days – where’s PPTP with mppe from a GUI? I haven’t been able to find it (apart from pptp-linux which does not seem to be enough), is there another way to configure it?
can Windows update Firefox, RealPlayer
No. Why should it?
To get WSUS I need Win2k3, etc
Yes. So?
Either you need to deploy patches in a network or not. If you don’t have a network than the whole issue is not problematic.
I still have to apply them in the right order
Yes if you’re doing it manually AND you don’t want to create a batch file to apply them all for you.
As I said, if you have 2-3 computers, then it’s not a problem – use Windows (Auto) Update, and you’re done.
If you have a huge network, then WSUS on Win2K3 is not the problem.
What’s your point? You want WSUS to update 3 computers? Big deal, just use Windows (Automatic) Update. Hell, I have 3 Windows computers at home, all of them use Automatic Updates.
Please, do not present your home network as something big, it is not. If the network is bigger, buying one Windows 2003 is not the problem. I can’t think of a single company that has, say, 20 Win boxes and wouldn’t be able to afford one Win 2003. Can you?
thing is that one do not need a extra tool in mandrake and similar. you just share one folder on a networked computer as the place the others are supposed to find the updates. then you cron the task up running a update on each of the machines.
why should i need expensive server version of the os and a extra tool (alltho free) when i can do it all with the stuff i get with the distro?
and to write a batch script to update windows manualy from downloaded patches still require me to figure out in what order they need to be applyed so that i dont blow my windows install to hell. if i trow update rpms at urmpi it will figure it out itself from the data in the diffrent packages.
allso, using windows update was a nogo as this was for systems that was offline, or maybe had a narrowband connection. some people still use modem/isdn in this world.
the idea was, drop by the local electronics store. grab a burn of the latest updates. go home. insert cd/dvd. hit update and point it towards the cd/dvd. sit back and relax while the system does its thing. store cd/dvd in case you need to do a full reinstall in the future.
yes it can be done under windows, but its needlessly complicated.
basicly i was thinking of home users with limited bandwith and little or no knowhow about the inner workings of a os. sure, you can say that they should then stay well away from linux. but i would say that they would get a better deal with linux, as long as the system comes preinstalled on the computer. or if they have someone help them config it first time round.
wsus if a big gun solution for networks of 50+ computers. but even there one can build the same kind of setup with a bit of cron, sh scripting and the basic update tools that a distro come with. and the solution can be tailored for both big and small networks
I don’t see a problem with updating a few Windows computers over a slow network connection (ie using modem) using Windows Update. Remember, Microsoft releases patches once every month and I’d say that on average you have to download 2-3 MB of updates. Big deal since it’s once a month as I said.
In case that Service Pack is released, you can always put those on CD or network share and easily deploy them. Those are released, what, once every one or two years?
No, I don’t see a problem with all that. Won’t even go into the discussion of how affordable broadband access these days is.
Bit slow…..
I been using 2006 since it came onto the club servers. I did have a problem at the start, as OpenGL was not working correctly on my nvidia 5500 card.
It is all sorted now and I am back playing ET again
Anyway, 2006 is monsterously faster than previous versions of Mandrake/Mandriva and other versions of Linux will have a hard job keeping up with the momentum Mandriva is moving at.