Submitted by The boys and girls in the Mandriva team have released Mandriva Linux 2010.0. This new Mandriva release obviously brings the latest and greatest from the open source and Linux communities, including the latest KDE and GNOME releases. Among other things, boot time has been a priority.
Mandriva Linux 2010.0 comes with KDE 4.3.2, GNOME 2.28, OpenOffice 3.1.1, and Mozilla Firefox 3.5. The kernel is at version 2.6.31 in Mandriva 2010.0, and of course comes with a set of patches “to make sure it’s tailored to the distribution”.
The bootsplash is now managed by Plymouth, which brings kernel mode-setting to Mandriva’s boot process without breaking compatibility with chips that do no yet support kernel mode-setting (by using the VESA framebuffer). It’s also easier to customise than Splashy, and has a simple script language for easy theme creation.
Two new graphical environments have been added to Mandriva as well. Moblin has bene included and is completely integrated; you can use it by installing the task-moblin package. The Sugar desktop is is available too by installing the task-sugar package. Of note is that KDE3 has been deprecated entirely, and is no longer available.
You can download Mandriva Linux 2010.0 One or Free, or order the PowerPack.
Mandriva 2009 Spring is the nicest distro I’ve yet tried on my Eee 701. Using KDE4 it crawled horribly until a stuck in a 2GB stick of ram, which was very cheap. Now it works pretty nicely, even with compositing switched on. Flash playback is a bit slow but I’m blaming that on Adobe to a degree.
I also prefer their KDE4 implementation to my Kubuntu’s, although in fairness my Kubuntu machine is very hacked-about whereas the Mandriva install is fresh. PulseAudio seems to behave itself too!
I’ll be really interested to see Mandriva’s 2010 release. I expect I’ll put it on my netbook – the kernel mode setting and boot time improvements will be particularly relevant there. What has so far put me off running it on the desktop is that the package selection seems a bit small (or at least to have some surprising omissions – where is nethack!? Falcons Eye isn’t a substitute for the nasty graphics of nethack/xnethack!)
Although I’m using Arch now, I spent a great deal of time distro-hopping, using OpenSuse, Mandriva, and Fedora respectively, all for a few months. If you’re looking for a great KDE experience, I’d recommend Mandriva from the “great three” – especially if you’re fed up with the disaster that Kubuntu has been for the last four releases. It’s lean (yes, it is, especially package management seemed to be a lot faster than zypper on OpenSuSe), mean, well integrated and fast.
I agree with the above poster, Mandriva 2009 spring was a really fine release, and seeing the early reviews of this new release, you can expect the same quality!
I am in the same boat. I run Arch in one of my laptops but I have to admit that Mandriva is amazing. I am barely discovering it and I will spend sometime studying how it operates. Amazing job!!!!
-2501
Mandriva – this is what I like the most:
One of the best KDE integrations in Linux (if not the best).
The best balance between stability and bleeding edge in Linux (at least on my hardware).
The best admin set of tools in Linux (no doubt here).
So, do we have to pay the Powerpack in order to have Mandriva 2010 in 64bits?
So, do we have to pay the Powerpack in order to have Mandriva 2010 in 64bits?
No, I just installed Mandriva Free and added the extra repositories from http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ . For some reason Adobe’s Flash didn’t wish to work, but there’s always Gnash so it’s not such a horrible issue.
I order to use the 64-bit Adobe flashplayer, you still need download it manually from http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
Then, put the ‘libflashplayer.so’ into /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/ if you want it to be available system wide.
I’ve been running 2009.1 gnome version on my AAO netbook for about 6 months now and really love it.
I guess I will be upgrading it to 2010 soon as I burn a disc.
I do think Mandriva is one of the best distros around for people new to linux to try also.
I’ve been running 2009.1 gnome version on my AAO netbook for about 6 months now and really love it.
I had 2009.0 installed on my home server, an Athlon 1Ghz with 640mb RAM
Anyways, it worked great back then. Then I just used online upgrade and got it to 2009.1 without a hitch. Now I just upgraded it to 2010.0, again with no issues. It’s pretty surprising, considering that I have lots of stuff installed from the PLF repositories and all the other distros I’ve tried usually fail in one or more ways during online upgrade.
Mandriva has its own share of issues and rough corners, but overall I find it way better than the competition and will continue to use it for years to come
I’ve been using the release candidates on a couple of my boxes and have to say, I’ve been very, very impressed.
I started out with Linux on Mandrake 6.1 and was a huge advocate until the 9.x releases. At that point they seemed to have lost their way a bit and the releases shipped buggier and buggier. I’ve kept an eye on Mandriva ever since, with the hope that they would return to being the high quality distro I remember so fondly.
It seems with the 2010.0 release, I can happily go back to using Mandriva full time. It’s got everything I’m looking for and seems to have sanded down the rough edges I’ve encountered in the past. All in all, signs point to a great release. A big thanks and congrats to all the Mandriva folks for a fine release.
I installed a copy of PWP 2008.1 on my new(ish) work PC and have been constantly prompted for upgrade by the system each time I log in. So today, as it was not a critical time period, I opted for it and rather than go to 2009.1 first, it has gone directly to 2010.0. I’m sitting here at my desk right now watching this and it seems to be a lot smoother than previous attempts.
We’ll see how it goes . . .
Well, I started the thing at about ten this morning and it took a few hours to finish, however, it was successful – I’ve never seen such a smooth ftp installation before.
That said, this is 2010.0 and some things are gone – like my beloved KDE 3.5.x – but everything seems smooth and there are just a few small things that need ironing out in the fullness of time. This school PC has only half a Gb of RAM but it still flies. However, there are a few things:
1: there seemed to be a large number of (unwanted) games being installed. Past installations from CDs/DVD allowed such things to be deselected, but this option was not available this time around. I can’t help thinking that such unwanted installations fall into the category of “crapware” – one of the reasons I left Windoze! ^_^
2: For some strange reason I could not restore the picture I used as a wallpaper under KDE3. I presume that some program has not been installed by default; normally something like this is not a problem (and I think I know which program that is in any case);
3: I normally have the Taskbar along the right-hand side and hidden until required. This option also seems not to be available; there seems to be very little available generally for configuration of the Taskbar.
These are minor problems and the whole thing worked as soon as it was installed – and after logging in again. This needs some tweaking but most of what is there is working fine. Today’s session was completed with the installation of OO 3.1.1, which also (curiously) was not installed automatically, which it seems to have been previously. But no major complaints – so far. It just seems that the default ftp install has things I don’t want (which have to be removed) as well as things that need to be added.
I don’t quite get this point
“3: I normally have the Taskbar along the right-hand side and hidden until required. This option also seems not to be available; there seems to be very little available generally for configuration of the Taskbar.”
Do you mean doing something like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P30KKaRImc&translated=1
As you can see the video is pretty old, things are better now, but this was the first video that I found
Well, The upgrade was perfect and I can’t believe it is not butter. It went smooth…over +1000 files were modified. I am cheating on Arch Linux right now.
Mandriva is awesome!
-2501
Old openSUSE and Debian fan here.
Debian has disappointed me in many ways (among others the early adoption of KDE4, not even the latest release).
OpenSUSE could be improved in many ways, but I don’t see it happenening right now.
Mandrake (as it was called at the time) was my very first love
I have been using it on and off, I haven’t always found it very stable.
However the last few releases have been really nice. I especially like their implementation of KDE4, it is the best I have seen till now.
Announce from the official blog
http://blog.mandriva.com/2009/11/04/mandriva-linux-2010-is-out/
Overview and features
http://www2.mandriva.com/linux/overview/
I have been using SuSe in the past (I think it was 5.6 or something) until I discovered Mandriva (called Mandrake around that time). I was impressed by the smooth integration of Gnome and KDE applications. I did not matter if you where using Gnome or KDE – everything was at your fingertips.
This is still the case today. I think Gnome and KDE get REAL equal treatment in this distro (and there are a bunch of installable other desktop environments too). I must admit however I am a big KDE fan, and really like the way KDE 4 is developing.
I must agree with the people saying Mandriva has one of the smoothest KDE 4 implementations. If you take a look at Kubuntu you can see how things can go terribly wrong. If Ubuntu/Kubuntu would be integrated smoothly they would be able to compete a bit with Mandriva, but at this time Mandriva 2010 is absolutely the winner.
It is really a shame this distro gets so little attention, but I guess that’s the way things go.
From my cursory amount of testing a few months ago I found that I got far less stress and anxiety from Mandriva, OpenSuse…..and then Ubuntu in that order. Ubuntu’s development process is quite frankly shoddy and haphazard and you have no idea what will get fixed or broken from release to release. It’s released on time and you can’t complain because you’re getting it for free.
Mandriva have their QA spot on, they seem to know what they want out of their desktop OS and their objectives and they’re not just bumping packages every few months. They’re not just releasing something because the deadline is up. While they probably have the best KDE 4 implementation out there right now their Gnome implementation isn’t too shabby either. When they produce something as good as this it makes paying for the Powerpack worth it.
I’m thoroughly confused that Mandriva gets little to no attention when other distros seem to live in their own reality distortion field, hurting the image of desktop Linux even further if that’s actually possible.
Because I can’t mod you up any longer, I want to stress how much I agree with your words.
Why the heck is boot time such a big deal? Why are resources even directed in that area? I’d take stability, consistency and many other aspects of an OS as a priority over boot time. What the heck difference does it make if an OS boots in 15 seconds vs. 30 seconds???
Maybe because some people, especially with some setups (ie. laptops and especially netbooks which are often shut down when not in use), would benefit from a quicker boot. Then there are the class of computer users/enthusiasts that look at it kind of like a car going from 0-60 (me, to an extent).
In my situation, I don’t *have* to shut down often (ever, really–I’m on a standard machine with AC power). However, because I’m often trying out distributions and new versions of them, I reboot frequently, and therefore quick boot times are nice. For me, a 30-second boot time is decent, maybe even 35, but much more than that and I start getting impatient fast.
If they want to improve their boot times, why not… let them. It will improve new users’ perception and first impression by being able to get into a fully-loaded, ready-to-use desktop in even less time. I don’t see anything inherently wrong with that. If you want a slower-booting, tried and tested distribution that focuses purely on stability, well… you know what to do. Keep using Debian or Slackware.
Meanwhile, assuming there are any major stability issues with speeding up the boot time, they will be fixed soon enough and then likely be picked up by the “stable” distributions eventually. Everyone wins.
Edited 2009-11-06 21:43 UTC
I can understand that. I don’t mean to imply that it cannot be something that people can appreciate…
I just mean I don’t think boot speed should be the “measure of an operating system’s value.”
Ive had Mandriva 2009 on my home machine for a while and it has been pretty rock solid. There are some things i prefer in debian based distributions (eg: apt) to Madriva/Red Hat, but otherwise its been pretty good to me. Mandrake was one of my first distributions that i really thought was a quality product along with early SuSe.
Made the switch to Mint at work and on other home computers, but after the snafu with the latest Ubuntu release i’m now contemplating which direction to go when i update my main computer.
Still, going to leave it a month or two and see how the fixes come for Ubuntu/Mint and then make the decision…. i small voice in the back on my head is saying Gentoo, and another voice is telling me i would have to be mad.