Mandriva Linux 2006 Review Continued

Anonymous Coward writes "The second part of the extensive Linux Tips for Free Mandriva Linux 2006 review has been published, going into details about the state of Linux hardware support and compatibility, hardware configuration and software with a whole section on digital photography. Part one was previously discussed on Slashdot."

Comments

Re:It looks good

[Hosiah]

Your question is wildly ranging into the hypothetical, so I can't give you an answer like "six months, 32 days, 11 hours, and five minutes". To get an idea what it takes to make a Linux distro from the ground up, try one of the source-based distributions: http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=Source- based&origin=All&basedon=All&desktop=All&architect ure=All&status=Active I can't vouch for any personally except Linux From Scratch, which works if you Follow the Book exactly. Now, to start with Debian and release it as your own distro, that's less work...provided you did the from-the-ground-up thing so you understand what and why of the guts of a Linux system. Almost all of the distros out there are based on derivatives of Red Hat or Debian (*sniff* and something like only two for my fave Slackware!). Pick up Knoppix sometime for a prime example of a Debian-based distro.

Now, Mandriva is one distro with it's act together. No text-mode installer or arcane package manager syntax for Mandriva - it's the *easiest* distro you'll ever run. But that comes at a price, because it's also *hardest* for a developer to create an interface that's a smooth, seamless uh.. $EXPERIENCE than it is to just make the damn program work already and slap the command line interface on it with a shell script wrapper.

Re:flakey market

[rmm4pi8]

Not everyone, I'm still on Mandriva. I know everyone says it's just for new people, but no one has given me a reason to switch: SuSE's YaST screws up hand-edited config files, Fedora requires much more set up to get running, and Ubuntu--why? Slackware and Gentoo just don't make sense for a laptop user who upgrades frequently. So why the beef with Mandriva--what's the downside? Everything they write is GPL, too.

Besides, Mandriva has a fairly good community, as I'll demonstrate here by reiterating my offer to provide free email/IM support to any Slashdot-reading Mandriva user (or potential switcher). I'm not a kernel-hacker or anything, but I have been using it on desktops, laptops, and servers for 4 years now, and I can fix most things when they break.