Mandriva Kiosk now on-line for club members

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Wed May 17, 2006 8:52 am

Mandriva has just opend up it's own version of "Click-n-run" called Kiosk.

It's available for club members, and if you're not a club member you can purchase a Kiosk-only membership.

I'm at the office at the moment, so I'll have to wait till I get home tonight to give it a try.

The latest Mandriva install ISOs uses KDE 3.4 at the moment, but 3.5 is available for install via the Kiosk. I think this would be a great package to test the power of Kiosk... see if it "makes it" or "breaks it". So I'll be trying that for sure.

The software library is pretty small at the moment. You can certainly get all of these packages installed on your own by finding the right RPM repository. But novice computer users seem to find that to be too much work. This Kiosk thing (as Click-in-run) certainly can't make it any simpler to install software.

I wish Mandriva success.

More on Kiosk HERE!

DaveQB · Post by **DaveQB** » Wed May 17, 2006 10:25 am

Awesome!

Mandriva is a great distro. Could end up being the true 'face' of Linux in the upcoming years.

Let us know how it goes.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Wed May 17, 2006 11:50 am

I definately will post my results.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Wed May 17, 2006 4:28 pm

DaveQB wrote:Awesome!

Mandriva is a great distro. Could end up being the true 'face' of Linux in the upcoming years.

Let us know how it goes.

If they don't go bankrupt again!

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Wed May 17, 2006 4:44 pm

Now, now... don't be mean. When that dotcom bubble burst, Mandrake/driva did pretty well at keeping their heads above water, while still making advancements on the Linux desktop that many distros. have benefited from. So, show some respect

Heh, heh.

Mandriva's got to focus, now. There's some real opportunities coming up in the desktop world (with all of the maneuvering coming from MS and Mac). While they're trying to corner the market, distros like Mandriva really have a chance to enchant computer users over to Linux.

Personally, I think they're making some good decisions. They've got me back as a *paying* distro. user.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Wed May 17, 2006 4:51 pm

Judland wrote:Mandriva's got to focus, now. There's some real opportunities coming up in the desktop world (with all of the maneuvering coming from MS and Mac). While they're trying to corner the market, distros like Mandriva really have a chance to enchant computer users over to Linux.

Yeah, unless the corporate dickheads makes it into more of a Novell-style business-focused distribution.

Judland wrote:Personally, I think they're making some good decisions. They've got me back as a *paying* distro. user.

I think they should improve the quality of the gratis version of their distro, because for a newbie trying it out to evaluate a potential purchase of say the PowerPack, I think it's kinda rough, especially when you consider that you now can get SUSE for absolutely nothing, which previously was named SUSE Linux Professional.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Wed May 17, 2006 5:03 pm

Tsuroerusu wrote:I think it's kinda rough, especially when you consider that you now can get SUSE for absolutely nothing, which previously was named SUSE Linux Professional.

Rough? How so?

I think projects like Kiosk show you very well the focus they are taking.... novice home users.

Then there's Pulse, which is geared towards corporate users.

So, there's real diversity. They don't seem to be putting all their eggs in one basket. They never did, from my point of view.

DaveQB · Post by **DaveQB** » Wed May 17, 2006 5:07 pm

Exactly there target audience Judland

How nifty is the Mandrake Control Center [MCC] ??
Its exactly what distro's need more of.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Wed May 17, 2006 5:12 pm

DaveQB wrote:How nifty is the Mandrake Control Center [MCC] ??

Pretty nifty, I'd say.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Wed May 17, 2006 5:18 pm

Judland wrote:Rough? How so?

This is not a good example, but it's kind of the best I can come up with:

With the gratis version of Mandriva, you get 3 CDs, with the PowerPack you get 6 CDs. Of course I understand that this is an advantage of their commercial offerings, but it really make things a little more complicated for the average, non-repository-aware user like I was when I first started. The gratis version is just not as easy to use in a few areas ...
Also, 79 bucks is a lot of money when you can get SUSE for absolutely nothing and still have five CDs of stuff that can eaisily be installed, and in general have a polished desktop (Yes, 10.1 is really bad in this area, but I fault Novell and not the SUSE hackers for this).

Judland wrote:I think projects like Kiosk show you very well the focus they are taking.... novice home users.

Well, recently they have been trying to improve their corporate side, especially since the firing of Gael Duval.

DaveQB · Post by **DaveQB** » Wed May 17, 2006 6:17 pm

Tsuroerusu wrote: Also, 79 bucks is a lot of money when you can get SUSE for absolutely nothing and still have five CDs of stuff that can eaisily be installed, and in general have a polished desktop (Yes, 10.1 is really bad in this area, but I fault Novell and not the SUSE hackers for this).

And all the bugs for free too

Sorry, had to say, feeling frustrated with SuSe here at work.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Wed May 17, 2006 6:24 pm

DaveQB wrote:And all the bugs for free too

Sorry, had to say, feeling frustrated with SuSe here at work.

Well, Mandriva has certainly had it's share of bugs in final releases too, but which distro havn't had a situation like this at least one time in one form or another.

SUSE 10.1 has been very problematic because of upstream needs, aka Novell, which caused a new package manager to get introduced late in the development cycle, and since Novell guys control SUSE in the end, I seriously doubt the SUSE hackers had a choice in the end, even though they knew it was a bad idea.

If you need a very solid distro, I say stick with SUSE 10.0 and if you're using it as a desktop, just upgrade to KDE 3.5.2, and you have a very functional desktop operating system that's stable and reliable. SUSE 10.1 is not suited at all for server usage, it's OK for desktop usage if you're sophisticated enough to install the Smart Package Manager and use that, because it's really only ZENworks that causes problems, the rest of the distro is nicely tested and stable, but the package manager is just terrible.

DaveQB · Post by **DaveQB** » Wed May 17, 2006 6:48 pm

I guess we all have own experiences and opinions

Read here for what experience with SuSe http://www.thelinuxlink.net/forum/viewt ... =7371#7371

Yet I used Mandrake from version 9.1 though to the new release names of 2005 and 2006 and have never had the problems I have had with suSe in only 1 month or 2.

Downloading Kubuntu right now here at work ......

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Wed May 17, 2006 7:21 pm

I have to comment once again on the exceptional user support one gets with a Mandriva purchase (or club membership), as well.

For a new user, I think this is MOST crucial to having a good experience with their OS. No matter how good a distro is built, someone, somewhere is going to have an issue. When that happens, it's nice to have some professional help to fall back on.

This happened to me when I first entered the world of Linux, with Mandrake 8.2 and having a Mandrake technical person a simple e-mail away was much appreciated. He knew how to answer my questions and did so in a way that made me feel that he cared. I still get that feeling even today from Mandriva support.

As corporate Linux goes, I've never experience or heard mention of user support as good as Mandriva. And it's for service like this that makes me feel like it's worth the 79 bucks. Also, the latest Mandriva release is really good, no question about it.

How's SuSE's customer support? I don't know as I can't get the darned thing installed on my test box.

If they had good customer support for their free distros, then THAT would be something!

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Thu May 18, 2006 10:42 pm

Well, how much freakin' simpler can upgrading KDE be made? I mean, I go to the Mandriva Kiosk website, click on the "install now" button and step back.

It took about 40 minutes to download and install all 216 packages, but after that, I simply re-booted the system and voila! KDE 3.5!

It's just like Klik, but this actually installs to your Mandriva system.

I'm impressed, to say the least. This is a huge step forward for desktop linux and the novice PC user. Great job, Mandriva!