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Mandriva 2007 Spring packs a punch
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CommentsI installed Spring Powerpack on three machines -- a dual-core box with 2GB RAM, a 1.7GHz Celeron with 384MB RAM, and a 1.4GHz Celeron laptop with 1.25GB RAM. While installing on the dual-core box, Powerpack complained twice that it couldn't load a module for the Marvell PATA disk controller. Despite these "errors," Powerpack installed successfully from the USB DVD drive.
During installation, from the partition screen, I was able to resize an existing ext3 partition on both SATA and IDE drives and install Mandriva on the freed-up space. On the laptop, Mandriva detected and configured the PC Card wireless network adapter. The Linksys wireless adapter on one desktop was detected, and since it doesn't have any Linux drivers, Mandriva pushed it over to Ndiswrapper, which asked for the Windows driver and activated the card.
Mandriva also had no trouble detecting and configuring an ATI Radeon graphics card, as well as a 19-inch wide-screen 1440x900 LCD monitor. All USB pen drives, cameras, mice, keyboards, and cheap PS2-to-USB converters I threw at it also worked.
Lots of options
After the installation process completed, I was ready to sample the software. The Mandriva Powerpack DVD bundles more than 3,000 packages. It's got the latest GNOME 2.18 and KDE 3.5.6 versions. Along with a Mandriva-modified OpenOffice.org 2.1, Powerpack also has the latest KOffice 1.6.2. Everything runs atop a custom Linux 2.6.17 kernel.
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| GNOME with Metisse - click to enlarge |
Mandriva Powerpack includes several virtualization tools -- Virtual Box, VMware Player, Qemu with the KQemu kernel enhancement, and Xen. While they are all available free of cost and can be added in any Linux distribution, having them preinstalled, or installable with a click, is a definite plus.
Also in the category of free-apps-missing-in-other-distros are Google Picasa and Google Earth. Instead of bundling these apps, Powerpack includes simple scripts that download them from Google's Web site and install them. For VoIP, Powerpack bundles Skype and WengoPhone.
To play all sorts of multimedia content, Powerpack includes KMplayer and Xine along with their respective plugin packages, as well as Gstreamer-plugins. I used Amarok to play MP3 files, KMplayer to watch DVDs and VCDs and play AVI and MPEG4 files, and RealPlayer to play .RM and .RAM streams. Firefox is equipped with plugins to play these files from over the Internet. Firefox also has plugins to display Flash and Java files. Also bundled is LMMS, a free sound synthesizer app to help produce and mix music. For video buffs there's Kdenlive, a multitrack nonlinear video editor.
One application that I miss in Powerpack Spring is the Abiword word processor. Also, on my Celeron desktop, I like to run the lightweight Xfce desktop, but instead of Xfce, Powerpack has Fluxbox, which I find too lightweight. Also, unlike previous releases, Powerpack Spring doesn't include Cedega for playing Windows games, and LinDVD, a popular non-free DVD player.
Adding packages that aren't installed by default is easy. In fact, the best thing about Mandriva Powerpack Spring is its custom configuration tools, which help users from installation to managing various aspects of the distribution. For instance, if you decide you want to use the Metisse 3-D desktop and don't have its packages installed, Powerpack will prompt you for the Mandriva DVD, install the packages, configure them, and enable the desktop.
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| rpmdrake under KDE - click to enlarge |
Powerpack uses the Ia Ora theme and the spring wallpaper across the GNOME and KDE desktops to maintain consistency. While the panel shifts from the bottom to the top in GNOME, the menu structure more or less remains the same, which helps users navigate irrespective of the desktop.
Powerpack also automounts all partitions on the disk and labels them with their size. When you insert external media, Powerpack pops up several action options based on its content. For example, when you insert a DVD, a popup presents options to browse the contents, play the DVD, or rip it with K3b. If you connect a USB camera, you get the option to view the pics.
In more than a week of testing, no application on any system crashed or become unresponsive. The only area I think that needs some more attention is documentation. Powerpack Spring includes basic KDE help and a Mandriva Startup guide, which covers a lot of ground, from a tour of KDE and working with OpenOffice.org to accessing remote NFS shares and setting up a firewall. But it's missing information about several Powerpack bundled apps, such as virtualization and Kerry Beagle.
Conclusion
I was pleased with Mandriva Spring's Powerpack edition. Its package selection is exemplary. It includes all the popular 3-D desktops and several virtualization products. It detected all my hardware on the desktops and laptops and worked with all my USB devices. Powerpack's custom configuration and management tools help keep novice user away from the command line. On the whole, Powerpack Spring is a fantastic Linux distribution that just works.
Comments
on Mandriva 2007 Spring packs a punchNote: Comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for their content.
Just one thing - even though Abiword and Xfce aren't on the Powerpack DVD, they are available as official, supported packages for Mandriva. You can install them easily from our official mirror sites. All you need to do is add one of our mirror sites as an rpmdrake package source. For instructions on doing that, see here:
<a href="http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Basic_tasks/Installing_and_removing_software#Making_more_applications_available" title="mandriva.com">http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Basic_tasks/Inst<nobr>a<wbr></nobr> lling_and_removing_software#Making_more_applicati<nobr>o<wbr></nobr> ns_available</a mandriva.com>
(the Wiki is actually a good place to look for docs, it doesn't cover everything but there's some useful stuff there). Once you've set up the internet repositories, you'll find Xfce and Abiword available from rpmdrake just like the packages on the DVD.
Take a look at the rest of that page too, for information on the various different repositories available for MDV; you'll find we make a wide variety of packages available, including updated versions of applications for stable releases, for users who want the newest software.
-Adam W., Mandriva
In addition, there are installables non-free live-CD's versions downloadables from Mandriva's Mirrors, avalible for everybody. The rest is the same: configure repository and download the software you need.
Strange choice of kernel version for a new release
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on May 09, 2007 06:25 PMEverything runs atop a custom Linux 2.6.17 kernel
Odd choice of kernel. Even Debian Stable, which has a reputation for being slow to adopt new stuff, runs on 2.6.18.
Re:Strange choice of kernel version for a new rele
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on May 09, 2007 09:57 PMRe:Strange choice of kernel version for a new rele
Posted by: Administrator on May 10, 2007 12:15 AMRe:Strange choice of kernel version for a new rele
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on May 10, 2007 06:00 AMThere is an alternate kernel maintained by a community member in the<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/contrib repository. It's called kernel-tmb. In Spring, it's a 2.6.20 kernel, with many driver updates and so on. It includes all the most important customizations that the official kernel uses, so it usually works pretty seamlessly. It's a good option if you have newer hardware that will not work with a 2.6.17 kernel. It's not officially supported, but the maintainer (Thomas Backlund) keeps it up to date regularly with the latest fixes and security updates.
-AdamW
<a href="http://www.howtoforge.com/the_perfect_desktop_mandriva_2007_spring_free" title="howtoforge.com">http://www.howtoforge.com/the_perfect_desktop_man<nobr>d<wbr></nobr> riva_2007_spring_free</a howtoforge.com>
All the non-free drivers and firmware are in the public non-free repository, along with some plugins (Java, most notably). A small amount of plugins and applications (including Flash and Acrobat Reader) are only available in the commercial editions or to Club members, but you can get the original versions of these from the publisher's websites, of course.
But there are some limitations and things that need workarounds.
1. Couldn't get ndiswrapper to work on 64 bit turion notebook (but it detected my atheros card without having to use mad wifi from source code like in Mandriva 2007 so no need to use ndiswrapper for me)
2. Wifi doesn't work after resume from suspend to disk or ram. Have to use modprobe -r ath_pci with root permission then the wifi would work. So I created a shortcut on the kde desktop to do this using root user. So every time I resume, I just click this and it would ask for root password and then I can reconnect. This is fine for me.
3. Couldn't get any 3D desk top to work properly with my ATI card. It's very very slow even with 128 MB allocated to the VGA. Will get support from Mandriva on this.
But overall, this is the best Linux distro I've ever used. 5 stars for Mandriva.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:-)
-Neranjana
3. mine works fine Metise and Xgl
ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R250 [Mobility FireGL 9000] (rev 01)
Can you tell me what are the differences between Powerpack and Free? Software that I can install on Free (Flash/others) will integrate into the browser/system the same way it does on Powerpack?
[Modified by: Anonymous on October 08, 2007 07:18 PM]
Virtualization
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on May 09, 2007 04:03 AM#