Mandriva Linux One 2009.0 (KDE)
One thing that sets Mandriva Linux One apart from some other distributions is its control center. Everything you need to configure your computer is available by clicking the Configure Your Computer icon on your desktop panel. Here’s a list of configuration categories available via Mandriva’s control center:
Software Management
Install/Remove Software, System Update, Configure Media Sources, Package Stats
Online Administration
Remote Control Linux/Unix, Windows
Hardware
Configure Hardware, Sound Config, Configure 3D Desktop, Set Up X Server, Mouse & Keyboard Config, Printer & Scanner Config
Network & Internet
Set Up Network. Network Center, Share Connection, Configure VPN, Proxy, Network Profiles, Remove Connections
System
Menu Style, Authentication, Manage Fonts, Date and Time, System Services, Manage Users, Import Windows Settings & Docs, Backups
Network Sharing
Configure Windows Shares, Configure NFS Shares, Configure WebDAV Shares
Local Disks
Manage Disk Partitions, Share Disk Partitions, DVD-ROM
Security
Permissions, Firewall, Parental Controls, Security Level and Audit
Boot
Autologin, Boot Setup, Display Manager, Boot Look and Feel
The Mandriva control center is very well designed and is definitely one of the pluses of this distribution. There’s quite a bit of computer configuration control placed right at your fingertips and you should not have trouble being able to do what you need to do in terms of getting your Mandriva system running the way you want it to.
(6 votes, average: 3.83 out of 5)
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Agree with your assessment Jim. I can report that with both the Gnome and the KDE versions an Intel 3945 or 5100 wireless chip should work with no problems. (I retain a Gnome preference, but Mandriva does KDE pretty nicely.)
The control center – which I think also appears in PCLOS – is one of the very nice things about Mandriva.
Also agree it loads a bit slowly, but the 32 bit version ran fine on my desktop with a 3 Mhz cpu and 2 gigs RAM. Compares quite favorably with the Ubuntu I run every day.
This seems a better Mandriva than the previous release.
Good review. As far as my own comments and observations, I have been running “The Cooker” periodically since before the 2009.0 release (more than a year), so I’ve had a pretty good idea about what is coming and how the current stuff works.
The Cooker, while not the absolute fastest performer (Debian variations are always up there, Slackware and Arch variations are frequently at the top), it is a good, consistent performer. Claims that the boot times (when natively installed) are true; I’ve seen boot performance pick up 5-10 seconds in the time I’ve been testing in The Cooker.
The Control Center has long been one of the good features, though with my long background going back at least a decade with Mandrake and Mandriva, I frequently use the command line versions of various commands, such as sudo urpmi –auto-update (to update the cache and install the latest package, equivalent to the Debian commands sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade).
I think that Mandriva has perhaps the best graphics artists of any distribution team, and it shows with great splash screens, wallpapers, and screen saver slide shows.
Another thing that had me using Mandriva a LOT (in the Mandrake days, before I got enamored with Debian) is that there are a ton of window managers, desktop managers, Web browsers, Email clients, and text editors available in the repositories, so when I need something, it is always there. That is one reason why I still tend to keep Mandriva releases around, plus I still like the system overall.
I’m going to be a bit more generous than Jim with my rating. I’ll give Mandriva a 4/5. Total quality could still be a bit better. You have to be very careful which packages you let Mandriva “trim” with the package manager, or you may delete a lot more than you planned. There have been lots of arguments over this with testers and the development community, and I know a few of the people involved in those arguments.
The speed of package installation is better than it has been in recent years, but it is still a bit slower than a good Debian package system, and definitely slower than the fast Arch pacman package management system.
The Cooker is a keeper on my fast test system, and when the Cooker went through this release a quarter ago, it went through quite well, and this release was one of the best KDE implementations available at that time. For what it’s worth, I can also tell you that the next release, 2010.0, due this Fall, is one of the leaders in packaging KDE 4.3, which should be out this month. Mandriva 2010.0 will be out around the time Kubuntu 9.10 gets released – and there is a chance it could beat it out the door (have not checked the exact dates yet for either of them, but probably late October, if my vague memory is accurate). It would be well worth another look at Mandriva then. If nothing else, though Ubuntu tends to steal a lot of the thunder, Mandriva is consistently one of the first to offer changes when either KDE or GNOME has a new release, so they represent a good desktop environment tracker!
I’ve been a Mandy user on and off for almost a decade, since MDK 7.0. I’ve got the latest version, 2009.1 Free, installed and running. I love the look of Mandy. In the days of yore, Mandy looked like it needed a makeover – that the look wasn’t as important as Red Hat’s or Suse’s. However, now they’ve really nailed it. It’s the best looking KDE 4 implementation I’ve seen anywhere! Other distros need to take note.
On the flip side, it’s terribly buggy. Inkscape won’t let me use any values above 245 for choosing colors in the color chooser, or let me use any fonts. I tried to copy all my files I have backed up to me new /home directory, and the notifications came up and went away, but not files were copied. I also tried to delete the old backup files on that drive, since they were from another distro, and even though permissions were correct, it didn’t delete anything. It acted like it wanted to, but just sat there and did nothing. It’s these kinds of show-stoppers that just keep plaguing Mandy. It’s not that Ubuntu or Fedora are all that stable, either. But, please, Mandy…start paying better attention. It’s like the packagers are packaging, but no one’s testing… You can almost forget about putting in bug submissions, because, in my past experience, Mandy doesn’t listen to its user base very well, and with Adam Williamson gone, it’s even worse.
On the plus side, it’s got the 2.6.29 kernel, so I had absolutely no trouble installing and running it on my X58 chipset motherboard. It boots fairly fast, though Windows 7 makes it look slow. I absolutely love having a 64 bit version to see all 6GB of my RAM. You just can’t beat the Mandriva Control Center. It’s the best control panel application of its kind. The feel of launching apps just feels more polished than other distros.
Wish list: Better debugging and fewer show-stoppers…a meta-package that installs all your codecs and such for you…a 64 bit version of One…and better package management (never ending request by the community that never gets filled).
Thanks for the review . I was the one who requested it..
I haven’t gone through it but judging by the screenshot. WHy you choose a 6month older release ?
2009.1 Spring is out for quite a long time !
My bad Shashwat, you’re right. Darn it. I must have snagged the earlier version by mistake. Aaaah well, too late now to redo the review.
I’ll keep an eye on it and do another review on its next major upgrade.
Looks like they may have addressed the boot time issue in the upgrade:
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.1_Notes
“Faster boot
2009 Spring improves again boot time, in two ways.
First, mkinitrd was improved to only wait for the exact devices needed to boot, while it used to wait for some useless device initializations.
Then, the boot time is improved more thanks to Speedboot. It starts all needed functions for the graphical system (display manager) first and then, continues all other actions needed for a full boot, in the background. “
Shaswat, I put an edit into the review that covered the mistake and also pointed out the boot time fix. So readers won’t be confused if they download the recent version rather than the older one. Thanks for catching that. I’m not sure how I ended up with the earlier version, I must have gotten it off of one of the mirrors.
Thanks for the Nice article.
One thing I found interesting during installation of Mandriva Linux one, not sure if it does while installing on VirtualBox is it has an option for “removing unwanted packages”. Other distro’s do not say anything about this during installation, so we dont know if they do silently in the background without asking the user. The welcome screen suggesting an upgrade is little annoying, which I could disable right away. There is an icon on the desktop, which I left alone. Overall it is a very neat distro. This was the first distro that I started getting good opinions on KDE4, Fedora 11 followed.
Where is my comment ?
It’s up above Shashwat. Can’t you see it? I can. Scroll up.
Naa the big reply I sent later in the afternoon :(