Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on November 04, 2005 04:27 AM
Mandriva's real strength is its active user community and its IRC support channel at #mandriva on irc.freenode.org (where I am cilkay). What has kept me coming back to Mandriva after I have used other distros, Red Hat, Fedora Core, Debian, Ubuntu (the current "sexy" distro), and scores of others is that community. I use Mandriva on desktops and in large scale web and application hosting, including hosting Xen VPSs (Virtual Private Servers). It gets the job done admirably well. Contrary to what the reviewer suggested, this is a distro that is just as useful to a very skilled Linux system administrator as a complete newbie.
I can run any distro. I choose to run Mandriva because it is well engineered, its package manager is second to none, and the community is very tolerant, friendly, and knoledgeable. By contrast, they eat their young on #debian, which is a shame because Debian is also a fine distro. Heaven forbid one should ask a "stupid" question there. This is the ugly side of Linux that many newbies unfortunately encounter. If you are a newbie reading this, before you choose a distro, hang around for a while on the IRC channels of the distros that you are considering. Pay attention to how newbies' questions are answered. Are newbies made to feel as if they are welcome or are they used as punching bags by the wannabe gurus who feel a need to demonstrate how brilliant they are by making newbies feel stupid? (Note: this does not let newbies off the hook for doing basic research and learning how to ask questions so that they get answered.) Is there a good mix of newbies and experienced users? How often does the channel degenerate into a flamefest? Are the channel ops diligent about keeping the channel under control? For example, on #mandriva, using foul language is not permitted because the channel ops, wisely, decided that they wanted to keep it friendly and appropriate for people of all ages.
Mandriva, in my opinion, is one of the most polished distros on the market. That, and the community around it, makes it very newbie friendly. There are no barriers for experienced users either so there is really no reason to think of Mandriva as a "training wheel" distro where as you get more experienced, you will switch to a "grown up" distro. The beauty of Linux is that you do not have to take the reviewer's or anyone else's word for any of this. The cost of trying various distros until you settle upon one that you are comfortable with is quite low. Go ahead, try a few. Mandriva can be downloaded from various mirrors around the world for free so if you want to try it without purchasing one of the boxed sets, feel free, though the boxed sets come with manual and official support. If you end up using something else and are happy with it, more power to you.
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Posted by: Anonymous Coward on November 04, 2005 04:27 AMI can run any distro. I choose to run Mandriva because it is well engineered, its package manager is second to none, and the community is very tolerant, friendly, and knoledgeable. By contrast, they eat their young on #debian, which is a shame because Debian is also a fine distro. Heaven forbid one should ask a "stupid" question there. This is the ugly side of Linux that many newbies unfortunately encounter. If you are a newbie reading this, before you choose a distro, hang around for a while on the IRC channels of the distros that you are considering. Pay attention to how newbies' questions are answered. Are newbies made to feel as if they are welcome or are they used as punching bags by the wannabe gurus who feel a need to demonstrate how brilliant they are by making newbies feel stupid? (Note: this does not let newbies off the hook for doing basic research and learning how to ask questions so that they get answered.) Is there a good mix of newbies and experienced users? How often does the channel degenerate into a flamefest? Are the channel ops diligent about keeping the channel under control? For example, on #mandriva, using foul language is not permitted because the channel ops, wisely, decided that they wanted to keep it friendly and appropriate for people of all ages.
Mandriva, in my opinion, is one of the most polished distros on the market. That, and the community around it, makes it very newbie friendly. There are no barriers for experienced users either so there is really no reason to think of Mandriva as a "training wheel" distro where as you get more experienced, you will switch to a "grown up" distro. The beauty of Linux is that you do not have to take the reviewer's or anyone else's word for any of this. The cost of trying various distros until you settle upon one that you are comfortable with is quite low. Go ahead, try a few. Mandriva can be downloaded from various mirrors around the world for free so if you want to try it without purchasing one of the boxed sets, feel free, though the boxed sets come with manual and official support. If you end up using something else and are happy with it, more power to you.
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