My folks are now Linux users and they are running Mandriva 2009.1-KDE4.2.
4.2 was the version that I found was ready for my retired parents to use and they love it,
Dad was a WinXP user but was easy to wean off since he was using FF3, Thunderbird, Skype, VLC and OO already and mom started using the computer this April. She knows how to surf, email, chat and Skype and dad says she seems to pick things easier than he did.

Mandriva-PCLinuxOS have always my distro for friends but having people in their 70s using Linux so easily makes me realize that it is as easy as any other OS.
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Another reason I like Mandriva is I want them to do well because they are a publicly held company and if they succeed, it could be a path for other distros to use. Ubuntu for all its success cannot be reproduced by others so its not really of use to other distros. Imagine if we have dozens of Linux distros which were real business (I dont want to put down SUSE which with Linux was doing the user friendly thing way before others) with sane models and fiduciary responsabilities.

My folks love this KDE desktop because I can make things BIG.
Too many designers worry about flow and lines and usability but forget that SEEING is the most importatn part of usability. Kwin effects help and the functionality and options of 3.5 are finally coming back.

PCLinuxOS2009 is a phenomenal distro but once you go 4.2 its
hard to go back so until they upgrade, Mandriva is still the best KDE4 distro around (ive used 6 so far)

I am a happy Mandriva user (since Mandrake 10). Now, maybe i’m a little bit biased or something, but I have to say: there’s no better OS than an up-to-date Mandriva 2008.1 with KDE 3.5! (Yeah, i’m speaking about the old 2008.1 not the 2009.1…) I won’t upgrade / change to anything else a few years to come… Haven’t had a single problem or crash and i’m using heavily my desktop PC to C/C++, Java and web development, graphics & design, http server, ftp server, music & video editing, score editing, math & physics simulation, virtualization (with seamless desktop integration), etc.
Everything is just so robust, integrated, slick & fast!
So if you don’t care about trying the latest & greatest and being on the bleeding edge, if you want a highly productive and relaxing OS experience, I recommand Mandriva 2008.1 Spring! :)

Hmm, I must not have been very alert or paying much attention when I first read the review. 2009.1 is the Spring Edition – 2009.0 is LAST FALL’s edition! 2010.0 is already undergoing testing and has Beta code available, at least in The Cooker, which I’ve been using.

Boot times are definitely improved, but there is one phase in the booting process where I still see room for further improvement, and that is right after the initial splash screen. Looks like Mandriva is loading up the device infrastructure (possibly) and it seems to go a bit overboard, trying hard to make sure it finds all possible hardware. There may be better ways to do this; PCLinuxOS stumbles at boot on this same issue, but Mandriva is definitely faster booting than PCLinuxOS, at least right now.

Jim, maybe it would just be worth reviewing again when 2010.0 comes out this Fall. Sorry I did not spot the old review version earlier! Must’ve read the article too early in the morning or too late at night! ;-) Good stuff anyway… what you did review!

I switched to Mandriva One as my main Linux distro from Kubuntu 3 months back and am loving it. The control center is real plus for this distro – I would also recommend downloading the documentation for the control center. Another plus was that the live cd installed ndiswrapper so that I can use wireless on my laptop with out any configuration at all unlike Ubuntu/Kubuntu where I had to use a wired connection to install ndiswrapper and WPA support.

My experience is that they implemented KDE 4 well.

You ought to look up the definition of “ideologue.” It’s an unnecessary insult that sets a bad tone for the rest of the review.

Hmmm…I get notifications when people post but I don’t see anything in my email about another post from you. I just see the ones you have here. Are you sure it went through? Please try reposting. As far as I know the commenting is working without a problem.

Naa the big reply I sent later in the afternoon :(

It’s up above Shashwat. Can’t you see it? I can. Scroll up.

Where is my comment ?

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.