Page 1 of 2

Even DistroWatch Gives Mandriva a "Thumbs Up" Revi

Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 9:24 pm
by Judland
You can read the full details here... but here's a quote I like:
Alas, my adventures with Mandriva received a major setback when the hard drive it was installed on started showing dangerously obvious signs of the drive going bad. As much as I resisted returning to Kubuntu on the other hard disk, I soon ran out of options when the disk with Mandriva started giving too many input/output errors. Reluctantly, I rebooted into the newly upgraded Kubuntu "Edgy Eft" and prepared to restore the data from the rapidly failing disk, if possible at all.

But to my surprise, after several hours of using Kubuntu's latest and greatest, I found myself inserting the Mandriva Linux 2007 DVD into the DVD drive, removing Kubuntu and installing Mandriva instead!
Mandriva "fanboys" rejoice! :lol: :wink:

Re: Even DistroWatch Gives Mandriva a "Thumbs Up"

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 11:13 am
by Gomer_X
Judland wrote:You can read the full details here
Link corrected (preview is your friend) :D

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 11:51 am
by Judland
Hmmm... strange that I didn't see that last night. I thought I checked the link.

Oh, well, thanks none-the-less.

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2006 10:06 am
by Gomer_X
Judland wrote:Hmmm... strange that I didn't see that last night. I thought I checked the link.

Oh, well, thanks none-the-less.
Well, considering I'll be 40 in less than 2 weeks, thanks for a chance to feel good about my eyesight. :D

I've got an Uncle who was a big Mandrake fan years ago until he gave it up for Fedora. I'll have to clue him in to the improvements to Mandriva in recent years.

I'm convinced that they've solved a lot of the problems that turned me off to the distro. If I could tolerate KDE, I'd give it a try.

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2006 10:10 am
by Judland
Gomer_X wrote:I'm convinced that they've solved a lot of the problems that turned me off to the distro. If I could tolerate KDE, I'd give it a try.
A fully integrated Gnome desktop is available, also; both as a live / install CD and in the PowerPack (or Free) edition. Just download the proper ISO (for the live CD) and check off the Gnome desktop option if you were to install PowerPack / Free.

Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2006 6:49 pm
by jaz
I installed 2007 from Linux Pro Mag. Install was a smooth as silk. Strange that all through the install my USB mouse worked fine but upon reboot no mouse. Mandriva 2006 worked fine but the release before 2006 had the same mouse problem (same hardware). Not a big deal to me I was just checking it out, for now I will stay with PCLinuxOS (Big Daddy)

Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2006 9:11 pm
by Judland
That is a little strange. I use a USB mouse, too (at home and at the office) but they're working just fine.

Once you went into the MCC, were you able to get Mandriva to re-connect to your USB mouse, or did you just re-install PCLinuxOS and not troubleshoot at all?

Just being curious.

Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 7:15 am
by doublejoon
Hey Judland

Could you explain the differences between
Mandriva One,
Mandriva Free,
Mandriva Discovery
Mandriva Power Packs

I tried Mandriva Free 2007. Install was great. Setting up 3d desktop was easy as pie. Now how do I get software updates. I clicked on the update manager ( I needed to setup and account wtih Mandriva Online). Did that. Updates still dont work.

I got frustrated and put Arch back on


The Mandriva website is very confusing.

Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 8:20 am
by Jza
Mandriva One, - LiveCD
Mandriva Free, - Free 3CD Distribution
Mandriva Discovery - Commercial (supported) distribution
Mandriva Power Packs - Commercial (supported) 5 CD 2 DVD bundled with commercial software

The supported versions includes the membership to mandriva club which has a lot of e-learning material and extra documentation.

Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 11:11 am
by jaz
Judland,

I installed Mandriva on an extra (tinkering) HD. When I had the problem didn't troubleshoot it since I had nothing invested just plugged in my main HD. I did check out the Mandriva forum and found no others that had reported usb mouse problems. I guess I should report the problem to Mandriva so they can look into it.

Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 11:23 am
by Judland
Jza wrote:Mandriva One, - LiveCD
Mandriva Free, - Free 3CD Distribution
Mandriva Discovery - Commercial (supported) distribution
Mandriva Power Packs - Commercial (supported) 5 CD 2 DVD bundled with commercial software

The supported versions includes the membership to mandriva club which has a lot of e-learning material and extra documentation.
I'll also add that the big difference between Discovery and the PowerPack(s) is the selection and naming of default software that is included. Discovery is geared towards the novice user, coming from other OSs. It is limited in the number of similar applications that are installed (by default) and how they are named (like Firefox is named Web Browser in the application menu).

The Free package contains only free software/drivers/etc., while the Discovery and PowerPack(s) contain some proprietary stuff.

The difference between PowerPack and PowerPack (+) is that there's more server side stuff available in (+)... at least from my understanding.

However, once you get any version of Mandriva 2007 installed, with the proper repositories, you can get them all to the same level.

Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 12:20 pm
by Tsuroerusu
doublejoon wrote:Hey Judland

Could you explain the differences between
Mandriva One,
Mandriva Free,
Mandriva Discovery
Mandriva Power Packs

I tried Mandriva Free 2007. Install was great. Setting up 3d desktop was easy as pie. Now how do I get software updates. I clicked on the update manager ( I needed to setup and account wtih Mandriva Online). Did that. Updates still dont work.

I got frustrated and put Arch back on


The Mandriva website is very confusing.
To get updates you need to open up the Mandriva Control Center and select to update, then it will ask you to pick a mirror and fetch the pacakge lists.

Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 12:31 pm
by Judland
doublejoon wrote:I clicked on the update manager ( I needed to setup and account wtih Mandriva Online). Did that. Updates still dont work.

I got frustrated and put Arch back on


The Mandriva website is very confusing.
For an easy set-up of the Mandriva repositories, I suggest you stop by http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ and follow the 3 step wizard to get all of the repositories you need.

Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 3:01 pm
by doublejoon
Thanks I will try it again on the remaing 75G of space I have left over from Arch re-install

Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 3:42 pm
by jaz
Linux Magazine has a fix for this problem.
http://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/72/ ... ation.html