Submitted by Returning to a biannual release cycle, the developers of Mandriva released a few days ago an initial alpha build of what will eventually become Mandriva Linux 2007.1: “Mandriva Linux 2007 Alpha1 (Hangzhou). This alpha version is available via two means. Firstly via the public FTP and HTTP sites mirroring the Mandriva Linux repository. Second, the preferred way, via either the provided One CDs (installable live CDs), or the installation mini CD i586 and x86_64.” Screenshots are available.
I have a sincere question.
4-5 years ago (then) Mandrake was the choice of new desktop Linux users, and it did its job well on that area (easy to install and use).
However today I cannot find a place for it. Yes it’s probably it’s been a long time since I last used it. But when you look at the current situation we have Ubuntu for newer users, Fedora for a cutting edge feature rich desktop, RedHat/SuSE/CentOS for enterprise customers, and Gentoo/Slackware for hardcore or hobbyist Linux users. But I do not know where (now) Mandriva stands at the moment.
I’m sure that there are at least some Mandriva users on OSNews. So maybe they can help me find the current distinctive features of the distribution.
My wife recently bought me the Linux Format magazine with Mandriva 2007 Free on the DVD. I had tried Mandriva One but there were problems with the install. The Free edition, however, went flawlessly. As somebody who has used mostly Debian and some FC5, I really like the configuration tools in Mandriva. I had become accostomed to the standard configuration tools in Gnome/KDE, but I really like having a central location for all my configuration needs. This is one thing that FC and Debian/Ubuntu lacks. Package management is much better than Pirut, which sucks in my opinion. Mandriva’s system is not synaptic, but it is not that bad either. The one thing that it lacks is an aplet to let you know when there are updates. I just started using Mandriva, so I am not all that familiar with it, but I heard that the editions that cost money have an aplet that lets you know when there are updates available. I also heard a rumor that this aplet will make its way into the free edition with the 2007.1 release. As a relatively new Linux user, Mandriva has been a pleasant surprise. I initially thought this would be a short-term experiment, but I may not be erasing my HDD any time soon.
My mainstay OS is pclinuxos an offshoot of mandriva with apt-rpm , With all the buzz of fedora i tried it ……big mistake , ruined my linux experience untill i got mandriva or pclinuxos back on my pc ,Next i keep reading about this incredible new Ubuntu sp i tried it , didnt like it any better than fedora so i thought maybe it was the particular branded version of unbuno i was using , ended up trying 2 more at which point had my sickened of linux and back on windows most of the time because of how frustrating it was , no easily usable easily locatable tool to partition the HD same for setting services on startup same for lilo/grub ….so on and so forth , not only that but it didnt detect a 3rd of my hardware while pclinuxos did
So when people learn that ubuntu isnt for everyone
killing IMHO better distro’s like mandriiva/pclinuxos
then i will be back to linux
You may ask , killing how ?
People almost dont say linux anymored , they say Ubuntu
No users=lack of bug reporting lack of interest=lack of updates lack of interest=lack of user participation
i think you get the ideal….end result the same
Even if I am not using it currently, Mandrake was one of the distros I started with. IMHO, you should place it along with ubuntu… there is room for more that one newbies-distro, the same way there is room in the other categories you mentioned.
Tired of pointless comments… when actually we’ll see a comment about Mandriva without mentioning Ubuntu? I understand that this is pretty standard thinking these days (without _real_ thinking involved) “…well, I used to run Mandriva, but now I use this wonderful *buntu…” So? stick with it and your preference.
Who ever told you that Mandrake was for newbies?
WFT???
Who actually told you that even Ubuntu (what an ugly african name, btw…) is for newbies???
And Fedora for cutting edge feature rich desktop??? Man, you have a very skewed view of the world… I’m actually glad you don’t use Mandriva, it doesn’t need such titans of thinking. Thank you.
I think some of the questions are addressed to me. I hope you do not mind if I answer.
(First of all I did not want to start any kind of “my distro, your distro” discussion, and the nicer comments above show that we weren’t there).
> Who ever told you that Mandrake was for newbies?
In that period (4-5 years ago), my friends choose Mandrake as their distribution and they were newer to Linux. (I used to use Slackware then). They were happy, and when I occasionally used their systems, I was comfortable too.
> Who actually told you that even Ubuntu (what an ugly african name, btw…) is for newbies???
Because they’ve sent several boxes of free CDs to our department, and we hand out them to students who want to try Linux. (Before that there was a Knoppix fame season. Actually we still distribute Fedora CD/DVDs when people request). This is probably because of “live-cd” feature.
> And Fedora for cutting edge feature rich desktop???
Yes it’s. We all know that RedHat supports many new technology developments (like LVM2, Xen, SELinux, GFS, Compiz, etc) either by buying them if not open source, or assigning developer manpower if already open source.
And where do you think RedHat first tries those technologies? (Probably not their enterprise offering).
I’ll try Mandriva (and SuSE) again when I find enough free time. They’ll probably not become my primary desktop choice, but I may introduce them to whom are more suitable (for example I tell new Linux people to try Ubuntu or Pardus, even though I personally prefer Fedora).
OK, I take a note – no body likes harsh opinions like the reaction in my first comment. But I have enough of empty politeness flooding from everywhere. Politeness is OK, unless it is used to misguide others or just said plain nothing but pretending it is…
*sukru*, your reply actually clears your view of the state of affairs quite better. Not that it makes your points valid – for me, no.
What provoked me to include a reply here is not even your particular comment, but the fact that it is so typical and so little based on objective information.
I can accept accusation for being old-fashioned, but I visit places like this in the hope to find objective discussions…. These days this is becoming very precious and rare, unfortunately.
But I see what is being valued is shifting toward mumbling and overexposing non-informed or ill-informed opinions… I’m a Linux user since about 13 years, have used all kind of varieties of other Unix flavors too, as well as OS that are based on different philosophy. And have used or currently use them further than just to see how user or newbie friendly they are. Am I learned something general about choice and value? I think I do – technology exists for some purpose. The more specific the purpose, the closer to perfection this technology is evolving…but humans often evolve most of their needs, so no perfection is matched with technology. One must comprehend that cycle, in order to be able to criticize constructively.
Many reviewers mention, or express opinions like “this distro is for technical users, this for newbies, and this for hardcore fans….” Such categorization simply sucks.. The rationality is not even touched – different flavors exist because of different likes, needs, preferences. The author of a review or opinion should make specific claims and express his preference or opinion after stating the facts that can account for his credibility – his experience with the product, his background experience, what he likes or dislikes, compare features to features, products or systems that are comparable, etc… Nothing like that is standard these days, sorry. Saying for example “this is the best distro I’ve seen” bring the question “How many you’ve seen, and further, not just seen, but actually used for extended time?”, or “This is the best distro for newbie”, brings “but who is a newbie in your thinking, and in what?” , etc, etc… All of this is pretty much important to bring a fruitful discussion. All material that does not supply it is plain bulshit. It serves better as anti PR for the whole community and people that otherwise may become precious members may turn in disgust after reading so much crap.
Like a few other responders to this thread, I also find it uninformed and fairly annoying that each time an article mentioning Mandriva is posted, there is an immediate response of “who cares, *buntu is better.” I’ve used both (and in fact, are currently using both Mandriva and Ubuntu, and I feel the need to make a few retorts:
1) Mandriva is no worse, and possibly better, for new users than ubuntu. The installation for Mandriva is *still* better than Ubuntu’s and, as someone else mentioned, the configuration tools provided by Mandriva are features Ubuntu (and many other distros) is flat out lacking.
2) It’s not always about new users. As an experienced linux user, I couldn’t care less whether I update my system via ‘apt-get upgrade’ or ‘urpmi –auto-select’.
3) Aside from package management, what’s the difference between any two linux distros? It’s just a matter of configuration. Mandriva uses a RedHat-style configuration while Ubuntu is based on Debian. Neither one is more difficult than the other, just different.
4) It seems like just about every negative Mandriva comment on here is appended by ‘…but I haven’t used Mandriva in a while’. What’s a while? All Linux distros were fairly crappy four years ago, and most of them are good OSes now. If you don’t want to try Mandriva (or don’t want to try it again), don’t. But why would you criticise a distribution you’re admitting to not using? Please do your homework first, then post.
Mandriva is still imho a very good distro for beginners (but equally useful for veterans), but afaik, Mandriva is not seen as a newbie-distro by Mandriva. They want to play all markets. They have the server/power-user edition and basic desktop-user editions. In the past, they had the desktop flavour and that was about it.
Unlike Red Hat, where the focus were business desktops and servers right from the start, Mandriva never really concentrated on only one area after release 10.0. This might be one reason why it is less popular now (if it is) as a desktop solution than some years ago when Mandriva was THE desktop distro for many many users.
Mandriva still does a good job on creating a desktop distro but – they (sadly) failed miserably when it came to marketing their products. Their website is a good example of the “organized chaos” they live in.
That said, I still run Mandriva on one of my laptops. It just works with that box where other distros (Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Slackware,…) had problems with detecting the hardware (for whatever reason). But as long as it is linux, I don’t really care which flavour I am using – as long as it helps me to do my job.
edit: Wrong button pressed… Ooops. It is a reply to post #1.
Edited 2007-01-01 21:54
Mandriva is a cut above any other distribution in its management tools and its easy software installation tools.
There is none of the silliness of Suse which intentionally cripples the xine engine in kaffeine so that you have to uninstall both to get working dvds.
In Mandriva, it is as simple as setting up the plf and contrib repositories and typing uprmi libdvdcss. (Yes, I know that it can be done with Suse and Ubuntu since I run and support those distributions too, but the process with Suse isn’t nearly as simple).
Mandriva also excels in internationalization. Its locale tool built into the Control Center makes it dead simple to switch running environments from one language to another.
Finally, its recent integration of both AIXGL and XGL is simply amazing and no other distribution offers this level of automated integration of a 3-d desktop, choosing the right 3-d solution according to what works best on your card.
The truth is that it is very hard to compete with gratis software and lots of people turned to Ubuntu because they shipped free CDs everywhere, not because it was a better Linux, at least not initially. Ubuntu’s founder has also been very smart to see the need to have a free and really supported version (3 and 5 years) and that is something that both Mandriva and Suse need to learn from as their current desktop distributions end up being expensive if you want five years of support.
I do agree with the general state of Mandriva’s web site (although it has improved) and their inability to project a unified and powerful message on to the market.
Mandriva remains a stable and easy to use distribution. It was the first one that my brother has actually enjoyed using.
Edited 2007-01-01 22:22
I made the mistake of upgrading my Mandriva 2006 to 2007 shortly after it came out.
The upgrade killed the system. Actually, the upgrade worked except for some problem I forget what it was now. Then I tried to upgrade the new install – which killed the system. Try figuring out where in 250MB of upgrades the problem is.
I know, I know – my stupid mistakes: first, for upgrading to a point zero release and second, for mass upgrading the software instead of doing it a little bit at a time so I could troubleshoot any problems.
Still, it soured me on Mandriva, so I switched to Kubuntu (after futzing around with SUSE 10.1 for a day – they had their software update completely hosed, so they got scrapped. Kubuntu had an install problem – their stupid distribution CD version won’t allow you to exit the mount point modification screen – thus proving that the ENTIRE INSTALL PROCESS WAS NEVER TESTED! Still, I persevered with a text install.
For the most part, Kubuntu works fine (except for the irritating no-root-anywhere business which is non-standard for Linux distros and provides little real security benefit). I also have a couple irritating bugs – an occasional “server overload” message when the multimedia subsystem is stressed, and an occasional loss of desktop icons, apparently due to some bug in the wallpaper changer when used with many image directories.
The distros need more testing of their install and software update systems.
Meanwhile, Mandriva could stand to list their bug fixes for this update if they want people to install the thing. Just telling us they went to Firefox 2.0 (months after Kubuntu did) is not good enough.
It’s an alpha. We only want you to install it if you want to help us identify bugs in it. That’s the point of alpha releases. If you just want a shiny new Linux to play with, don’t get this.
BTW, this isn’t the official first alpha. It’s a Cooker snapshot. Our general cycle is to do an early Cooker snapshot then start the actual alpha / beta cycle a few months later. The final 2007.1 will be rather different from this.
I have a 2001 server. The updating app has been broken since inception. There still trying to work out a fix. I hear hopeful signs from the forums (I am a silver club member), but still no go. Seems odd to be working on the next version when the current one is broken.
To be clear, I can manually update the system, I just receive no notifications of updates like I do on my Ubuntu systems (and like I did with older Mandiva editions).
you’re talking about Online, yes?
it’s currently half fixed – the server end is done, there should be an update for the client soon. It was supposed to be last week but obviously got delayed.
We work on stable releases and future ones in parallel, we always have (and so do all distributors as far as I’m aware). In most cases with different people. The guy who is working on fixing Online has no responsibilities related to developing 2007.1, so there’s no overlap there.
Thanks for the reply. I think I vented a bit, but it does seem like an unusual problem for a released product (I’m a developer). Nevertheless, it doesn’t have a great impact since you can manually update.