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Mandriva Linux 2010 Is Finally Out
ennael writes "We finally did it. Mandriva Linux 2010 is out and comes with many improvements and innovations. We still go on supporting in the same level of integration GNOME 2.28 and KDE 4.3.2. Support for netbooks is improved as users can now easily test Moblin 2.0 environment. 'Smart desktop' coming from European research is now fully integrated and is the first real working semantic desktop. Mandriva Control Center also brings improvements in tools: a new netprofile management tool, a GUI for Tomoyo security framework, and parental control. A big thanks to our community, who worked hard and made this release possible."
I use Debian myself, but started out with Mandrake (which became Mandriva). It's a very nice distro actually, more polished than Ubuntu. Also I believe it comes with codecs and other non-free stuff as well as pretty good support so the buyer does get value for their money. For someone just switching from Windows who wants a higher degree of "fit and finish" it's a solid choice. It's not for those whose primary concern is an idealistic and uncompromising free OS though.
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No I also like Mandriva. Here's to hoping Mandriva 2010 undoes some of the damage caused to the Linux image by the Ubuntu Karmic release SNAFU.
I wouldn't mind seeing Mandriva gain some ground, and some new packages in the process.
A fool and his lamb are worth two in the bush.
It had a few questionable releases around the Mandrake/Mandriva switch, but it's very very good now. From what I've seen it's probably one of the best distros for KDE, better than Fedora and Kubuntu.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
For those of you who jumped onto the Linux boat in the Ubuntu era, Mandriva / Mandrake is mostly a hold-over from the days when Red Hat Linux was the biggest Linux distribution around. Red Hat was still a little difficult for some users, so Mandrake was based off Red Hat with more of a focus on polish and ease of use for desktop systems... Maybe similar to the relationship between Ubuntu and Debian. Like Ubuntu, Mandrake was very important, and if someone needed an easy Linux distro, Mandrake Linux was almost the standard.
I still remember ordering Mandrake and Slackware CD's through the mail because they were too big to download on a 56k connection. For a few dollars any number of companies would burn disks as send them through the mail. It wasn't standard for everyone to have broadband, or to be able to do updates through the Internet. In retrospect, Linux was certainly clumsier, rougher, and less stable on the desktop. A quick spin with Mandrake Linux 7 can show you how radically the Linux desktop experience has changed in the last nine years.
This clumsy user experience was also responsible for turning many Linux geeks away from the "bloated" desktop environments and more toward bare metal distributions such as Slackware and Debian, along with minimalist window managers, xterms, and other such tools. In my case, after struggling with Red Hat and Mandrake, I found the simplicity of Slackware to actually be easier, and lived over in that world for the next 7-8 years until Ubuntu really started to shine. I am sure there are many other Slashdotters who have had similar experiences in their years with Linux.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems