Mandriva ? My Home desktop and server since 9.0...
Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on November 19, 2005 09:05 PM
As a daily user of Mandriva since 9.0, I've quite a different opinion on it than the reviewer.
My satisfaction of its daily use reaches about 95% I believe, a figure I've not been able to reach with any other OS.
Installation is easy, but moreover once it's installed it really works well, fast, and for a long time. Just imagine using a PC without having to always fear viruses, crashes, lost data, system slowdowns, spyware, and<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... a fee for every additional simple feature you need. Frankly, who nowadays would take the risk to have bank user/password information on a computer running a virus and spyware-invaded OS ? Not me.
So once configured, you can't really beat Mandriva I've found.
But there are still areas where I would like to see Mandiva progress.
Especially because although I've used Mandriva on an old computer for a long time, I've finally bought a brand new 64 bits computer with the intent to install Mandriva on it. Thanks to the maker respect for free trade laws (Maxdata) I didn't pay for other OS as it was optional (a €70 saving I happily used to add useful features like Bluetooth and more RAM and hard disk), so I installed Mandiva as I planned.
Where I had problems is that many hardware features on this new laptop were brand new cutting edge cool stuff and were not easy to configure: wireless lan, acpi-compatible pcmcia, memory card reader were not easily supported.
I could finally get the wireless lan working but pcmcia and memory card are still not working for me. Hopefully these problems have been solved now so when I really need these features I can enjoy them.
But that's really where I would like to see Mandriva (and other Linuxes) progress: support for recent hardware features.
I believe Linux in general was often used on servers or older PCs before as it was faster and could run on slower older hardware, therefore support for brand new laptop h/w components was not critical.
Now that information security and performance (I think still only Linux has released 64 bits OS for desktops and portables) motivate more users to use Linux, it becomes more important for distributions to insure that their OS will run fully on new PCs like laptops for instance.
This was still lacking in the Mandriva 2006 unofficial RC version I tried.
So all the blah-blah of the reviewer about providing more help and education to users is really not where I would like to see Mandriva invest their money: there's Internet for that, which provides much up-to-date information than any help documentation on a CD.
Just make sure trendy new hardware features (like built-in multi-standard memory card reader) work with the distribution and it'll be hard to beat you Mandriva !
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Mandriva ? My Home desktop and server since 9.0...
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on November 19, 2005 09:05 PMMy satisfaction of its daily use reaches about 95% I believe, a figure I've not been able to reach with any other OS.
Installation is easy, but moreover once it's installed it really works well, fast, and for a long time. Just imagine using a PC without having to always fear viruses, crashes, lost data, system slowdowns, spyware, and<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... a fee for every additional simple feature you need. Frankly, who nowadays would take the risk to have bank user/password information on a computer running a virus and spyware-invaded OS ? Not me.
So once configured, you can't really beat Mandriva I've found.
But there are still areas where I would like to see Mandiva progress.
Especially because although I've used Mandriva on an old computer for a long time, I've finally bought a brand new 64 bits computer with the intent to install Mandriva on it. Thanks to the maker respect for free trade laws (Maxdata) I didn't pay for other OS as it was optional (a €70 saving I happily used to add useful features like Bluetooth and more RAM and hard disk), so I installed Mandiva as I planned.
Where I had problems is that many hardware features on this new laptop were brand new cutting edge cool stuff and were not easy to configure: wireless lan, acpi-compatible pcmcia, memory card reader were not easily supported.
I could finally get the wireless lan working but pcmcia and memory card are still not working for me. Hopefully these problems have been solved now so when I really need these features I can enjoy them.
But that's really where I would like to see Mandriva (and other Linuxes) progress: support for recent hardware features.
I believe Linux in general was often used on servers or older PCs before as it was faster and could run on slower older hardware, therefore support for brand new laptop h/w components was not critical.
Now that information security and performance (I think still only Linux has released 64 bits OS for desktops and portables) motivate more users to use Linux, it becomes more important for distributions to insure that their OS will run fully on new PCs like laptops for instance.
This was still lacking in the Mandriva 2006 unofficial RC version I tried.
So all the blah-blah of the reviewer about providing more help and education to users is really not where I would like to see Mandriva invest their money: there's Internet for that, which provides much up-to-date information than any help documentation on a CD.
Just make sure trendy new hardware features (like built-in multi-standard memory card reader) work with the distribution and it'll be hard to beat you Mandriva !
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