Submitted by Jack Wallen of TechRepublic tried the Mandriva 2008 Spring and his verdict is “Mandriva Spring 2008 Live CD better than most other distributions fully installed.” He claims that “This is, without a doubt, the finest release of any Linux distribution I have ever experienced in my 10+ years of using Linux.“
This is where I am truly amazed. Even running as a Live CD Mandriva is out performing the fully installed gOS on the laptop.
Look I’m glad the author likes the OS. That’s awesome, but flat out making dishonest claims won’t get any of us anywhere. Unless you have a hard drive that is say 6+ years old, there is absolutely no possibility that a livecd outperformed a real install. Period.
Offtopic: IMHO I wish the livecd as install cd craze would go away already. I have no need to load up an entire desktop full of bloat just to run one little installer application.
Didn’t you just go wrong? A livecd OS could be configured to run the entire OS from system memory, whereas a different installed OS could be configured to run and page from disk, making worse use of the faster system memory. It is entirely possible to have a livecd OS run faster than an installed OS…
I’m well aware of this. Just because it “can” be configured to do so, does not mean that is the standard way of doing so, or even a common way. My home workstation has 1GB of RAM and nearly every livecd that I’ve tried the load to RAM option on fails miserably. Except DSL, which can load on nearly anything recent.
The point is, a fracking installer should never ever ever ever need over 1GB of RAM.
I’m also aware that Mandriva and others provide install only cd sets. Again, just because it’s one way to go does not mean it’s common. My days of burning 3 to 6 CDs for a Linux install are over.
There’s a single DVD option. Or the mini ISO, which provides a basic package set on a single CD, and you can add to it with urpmi. Or you can do a network install from the 11MB boot.iso. Lots of options.
//The point is, a fracking installer should never ever ever ever need over 1GB of RAM. //
Why the hell not? What else would you be doing during an install, but installing the OS? WTF if it takes up even 4 GB during the install? 99.9999% of users would care less.
I believe that the parent poster meant that no installer on this Earth should EVER require such amount of resources to perform a freaking install(!). While I will concede that few machines – if any – are sold with less than 512 Mb of RAM these days, there was a time that one could use a graphic installer with as little as 128 Mb of RAM and distros like Slackware still use the good old text-based installer that will run on even less powerful machines and get the job done the same way. It also reminds me that the Windows XP installation procedure on a brand new machine is text-based to a certain extent and the GUI installer that comes after that doesn’t really need such horsepower to run (actually, it will work on pretty modest machines – credit should be given where credit is due).
Go ahead and tell me that I’m not following the times but it wasn’t that long ago that early Ubuntu releases were using the old Debian ncurses installer (2004-2005?) but were still praised as a God gift and many still managed to get it installed easily.
I like the approach that many distros have been taking lately: use the Live CD as a demo that can also work as an installer but also offer the proper installer that works regardless of the Live CD option during boot…
“I believe that the parent poster meant that no installer on this Earth should EVER require such amount of resources to perform a freaking install(!)”
The problem is that he just plucked the number out of the air. Mandriva One certainly doesn’t need 1GB to boot (and hence install) – I think we cite 256MB but I wouldn’t be surprised if it worked in 128MB or 192MB. I don’t think any other live CD installer needs anything like 1GB either – I’d expect them all to have requirements similar to ours. Our old-skool installer needs I think 96MB minimum these days (the limit is the size of the installer application itself, which has to be loaded entirely into memory – we used to be able to get by with 64MB, but it’s kinda grown since then).
Edited 2008-08-06 15:45 UTC
Nobody told you to install from the Live CD. There are many other installers that just install like any other installer. You can do a network install or you can use the Free DVD installer or the Free 3 CD installer or the mini CD installer. If you are a real newbie then the Live CD installer could make your life easier. Also the Live CD is good for testing the hardware compatibility before you touch the hard drive.
“Offtopic: IMHO I wish the livecd as install cd craze would go away already. I have no need to load up an entire desktop full of bloat just to run one little installer application.”
As satan pointed out, MDV also offers a traditional installer available in several ways. Most distros have alternative install methods you can use if you don’t like the live CD install system.
With Ubuntu 8.04 and up you can boot directly into the installer which by passes the LiveCD desktop.
Edited 2008-08-05 20:34 UTC
I’m no huge Ubuntu fan but that does sound like a very cool option.
If this behavior (emphasis added) impresses the author so much, I wonder how many distributions he has actually tried. (emphasis added)
The review is a bit thin on details, but it suggests that Mandriva has done a lot of hard work to make their distribution to work out-of-the-box. Either that, or they were amazingly lucky to optimize things to this guy’s laptop and desktop. That seems too improbable to believe.
To the previous commenter: It doesn’t strain reason that his HD might be six years old, or older. I have a 7 year-old, much-abused iBook that my son uses.
“If this behavior (emphasis added) impresses the author so much, I wonder how many distributions he has actually tried. (emphasis added)”
Quite a lot, actually. If you check his archives, he’s recently reviewed OpenSUSE, PCLOS, gOS and Fedora, and from his entries he’s clearly also used Ubuntu.
I don’t think that was the bit that impressed him, but it’s not really too serious a bug. =)
Oh! Come on Adam. This is the guy who said we can create OS X without Apple by installing gOS. http://www.osnews.com/story/20057/OSX-Like_Operating_System_Without… .
I agree that Mandriva is a top-notch distribution, but his past reviews doesn’t make him an expert. In fact his previous review just undermines his knowledge as a OS enthusiast.
Edited 2008-08-05 20:20 UTC
amjith: you must have got Adam-with-technical-guy-hat-on confused with Adam-with-PR-hat-on.
Adam-with-PR-hat-on is perfectly happy to attempt to spread positive press on Mandriva everywhere, no matter if its author is apparently on gigantic doses of happy pills =)
And anyway, his gOS and PCLOS reviews got linked everywhere, so it’s only fair for his MDV review to get the same treatment.
Okay, the defence rests
As a complete desktop system, with as much stuff working out of the box as possible, and great GUI config tools, great package management, and great look and feel, and great support, Mandriva 2008.1 has been the best overall for me.
At this point, Mandriva is better than Ubuntu Hardy, openSUSE 10.3 and 11.0, PCLinuxOS 2007, Mint 4.0, Mepis 7.0, and Fedora 9, for me and on my hardware – a Dell Insperon 1526 lappy with ATI video card and broadcom wireless, and 1280×800 resolution (which all of the above, except Ubuntu Hardy, fail to detect properly, but Mandriva did it perfectly).
Some other points:
I’m finding I’m liking urpmi and RPMDrake at least as much, if not more than, apt and Synaptic (and that’s coming from someone who has preferred Debian based distros for quite a while).
The Mandriva repositories are good about putting in up to date backports, so some popular titles get put into the repo soon after upstream does a release. This is awesome, because I don’t have to wait for the next release of the OS (and install/upgrade) to get the latest in many applications. I can simply open up RPMDrake, make sure backports is enabled, then I can find that latest app. No other distro does this, at least that I’ve seen, or to this extent (I saw it a little bit in openSUSE 10.3). Ubuntu certainly doesn’t do it (heck, Ubuntu is still on Eclipse 3.2 – pathetic)). Debian Sid and Experimental do it, but those are way to unstable for every day use.
Mandriva Control Center is great, and IMHO, sets the bar for apps of it’s kind. It’s much better than Yast, and much much better than anything Ubuntu has.
The Metisse 3d desktop is cool, and unique. It was cool that Mandriva did their own, because Compiz is sill to kludgy and unstable for my tastes.
For general desktop use, Mandriva is getting as close as ever to being a decent Windows replacement.
Now, if only some standardization can take place, so ISVs and IHVs can more easily target Linux, we’d be in business.
Either the author is flat out drunk when he wrote this, or he’s got a weird crush with Mandriva.
Give the distro praise for the honest points in which it outperforms other distros. Making dishonest claims just takes away from the credibility of the entire article.
I was a Gentoo user for about 7 years before Mandriva got me converted back to using binary distros. They just have made a distro that’s rock solid in almost every conceivable way. But I still wouldn’t call it absolutely the best Linux distro whatsoever. It’s all YMMV
There’s also a couple things I’d like them to improve, like set it up automatically with default repositories enabled and check for updates at the very start of the first boot. And I very much dislike the default theme. That’s something I always change. Aside from that I only add PLF repos and install all the additional gstreamer packages
I just haven’t found any need to tweak it any further :O
I tried Mandriva Spring 2008 on my EEE pc. Admittedly, the EEE is, by today’s standards, a slow piece of hardware, but I found Mandriva to perform really badly (i.e. very slowly) on my EEE.
So yes, you get a nice desktop, loaded to the gills with more or less useful utilities, but I would not use it on older or less powerful hardware. Mind you, on 1.5Ghz Pentium M, this distro would fly already, and that’s fairly old hardware by now, but this distro is not really ‘netbook’ ready.
I installed Xubuntu instead, which works just fine and is definitely a lot lighter (Debian I found too far behind with new packages, I couldn’t get Firefox 3, and I had sole issues with Arch)
Edited 2008-08-06 08:19 UTC
Drhyte: did you catch this one?
http://wiki.eeeuser.com/mandriva_2008.1_on_eee_pc_faq#a11
ah
No. Never found that
Well, for the next couple of months, Ubuntu is there to stay, but I withdraw my judgement on Mandriva.
Cheers!
d.
I have Mandriva 2008 installed on a Seagate Freeagent external HDD. Did not boot in it almost 6 months and when the last week I did that the OS updated and everything went well. Works very well and is very speedy. Compared to Windows XP installed on the same drive Mandriva is years ahead. Then I decided to install the live CD of 2008.1 to the internal hard drive and once again everything went very good. The speed of the system is awesome, updates installed instantly, nVidia (8400) correctly recognized, Compiz-Fusion working out of the box, rpmdrake, urpmi, bluetooth, kaffeine and amarok for multimedia…
Almost everything a home user would need.
And I am a happy Mandriva user now. I am a little bit a kind of a distro hopper but this does not change the fact that I prefer to boot into Mandriva and the Slackware install is waiting me
Thinking of recommending Mandriva 2008.1 to some friends
In the middle of 2004 I decided not to use Mandrake anymore but I am always open to good things. And now Mandriva IS really a good thing.
I read all these nice-sounding reviews of newer distros (OpenSUSE 11, Mandriva 2008.1, Fedora 9) but I can’t try any of them because at some point in between the release of the 2.6.22 and 2.6.23 kernels, support for the formerly well-supported RaLink rt2500 and rt61 chipsets got broken. All my computers get their Internet through wireless cards using one of those chipsets. The current crop of distros (including Mandriva 2008.1) all use 2.6.25, which have broken RaLink wireless drivers. The NEXT generation of distros will probably be broken to, as support is STILL broken in 2.6.26 and 2.6.27-rc. Thus If I want to surf the net, I’ll have to stick with my current (2.6.22-based) OpenSUSE 10.3 setup until I can at least find and buy a card that works properly with newer kernels.
Wow, ralink is still broken? I think it’s awesome that the Linux wireless drivers for one of the very few manufacturers that provides chipset documentation is broken.
I have the same problem. The drivers are GPL for crying out loud. WiFi (and the associated desktop tools) should be flawless. Inexcusable IMHO.
madcrow: don’t just make assumptions based on the kernel version listed for a distro. All distros patch their kernels quite extensively; just because their kernel is based on 2.6.25 doesn’t mean they’re using the versions of the ralink drivers direct from upstream 2.6.25. You should at least give the live CDs for the latest distros a shot, it’s certainly possible that one or all of them actually have a driver that would work for your cards.