Slashdot Mirror
What Can Mandriva Linux 2006 Mean for Home Users?
sitor writes "What can Mandriva Linux 2006 mean for home users? is an article giving an extensive explanation about the pro's and con's of using a linux distribution such as Mandriva Linux 2006. It was written with people in mind that are in doubt whether linux might be something for them or not. It aims to inform them in a neutral way, understandable to newbies. Next time you have someone asking you questions about Linux not knowing whether they should try, you can just direct them to this article."
Next time you have someone asking you questions about Linux not knowing whether they should try, you can just direct them to this article."
With all respect to Mandriva, I'd much rather just point them to ubuntu
(I feel I should make an OS X reference, but I just can't be bothered)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
That article is rubbish. Ubuntu is obviously the choice for first-time switchers, and is the most polished and accessible distribution for newbies and gurus alike. The article doesn't seem to have much of a grasp of the concepts of Linux, or say who would switch and why, and what they'd encounter. And as for paying for mandriva so that you can play DVDs. What the hell? Who wrote this crap? Sorry, nice idea, but better articles have been written before. I think a windows->linux wiki written by past, present, and future switchers would be a much more interesting idea.
Linux Mandriva 2006 _is_ my home PC main operating system, i.e. the one that gets booted by default. That said, if this is one of the supposedly most "desktop friendly" distributions, i can't be very optimistic. For starters, 3D acceleration does not work. It's an ATI card, ok, but you can't dismiss what nearly half PCs use just by saying "buy supported hardware". You can blame ATI more than Mandriva, but it's a fact that the same hardware under SuSe worked with ATI drivers (other minor things didn't work, like booting reliably and not freezing). Then there's the myriad of little (and not so little) annoyances, like the KDE Control Center becoming suddenly empty. What would you say about Windows if the Control Panel icons randomly disappeared for no apparent reason? And how do you explain to your non-geek (but not illiterate) relatives that in order to download and install software it's not sufficient for the site to say "RPM - for Linux", but it must be pulled "automagically" from some repository holding just the right kind of RPM for the specific Mandriva release? IMHO, these are the kind of things that keep lots of people from using Linux on their home PCs, where things either "just work" or they are not worth fiddling in order to make them work.
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
I generally agree that Microsoft has the monopoly and consequently it is very hard for Linux to mean anything to the home user but...
Lose the Microsoft Office Applications off of the Windows platform and the home user suddenly has less and less reason to be sitting on a MS platform. The Opensource movement can make a serious impression on the Microsoft world by pushing hard the alternatives like OpenOffice.org that the home user can really make productive use of.
Make a couple of apparently insignificant 'baby steps' away from the Microsoft applications and all of a sudden, you begin to wonder why you need Windows. I made the move to OpenOffice back in November 05 and I am now beginning to see the light and the possibility that within the next few months I may not need Windows at all. Without MS Office, there is almost no need to have Windows!
There are only two things that need to be fixed in the Linux world in my view for even greater acceptance:
* Vendor support for Printer drivers (eg: Canon)
* Mainstream publisher support from all the top games vendors.
"If it's lost, it'll turn up. Things always do" "I love it when a plan comes together"
I can't blame just Mandriva, Wireless networking moved too fast for the Linux Distros and all of them seem to be "klunky" when it comes to Wi-Fi, but things are catching up.
Try downloading the latest Network Manager, which seems to be a lot better (I am gonna try this tonight)
Not only should you warn your friends:
Those games you love to play on Windows? GIve them up.
Im in quite lucky position since the game i most played in windows was Targetware, which as i noticed runs much better on linux (better fps, lot smoother) It made me really wish more games would be made for linux due to obivious benefits of better memory management (you need less physical memory for similar performance as windows tends to swap too easily). So i want to add in what you say. Very likely, but not necessarily.
But also:
Those mp3s and DVDs? Don't expect them to play out-of-the-box. I'm serious.
It doesn't take more than few minutes (or few seconds using a script) to get them working and it's not really that hard. Installing codecs is overall easier than installing additional audio/video codecs to play most DivX and Xvid content on windows platform.
Though it would be good idea for ubuntu devs to add the script on desktop of new ubuntu install so users could just click on "Add non-free software repositories & Install commercial codec support" icon and be done with it.