Duh!!

@ Marc: Guess you might have missed the sarcasm, they dont have sarcasm on beetle-juice anyway...... :P

What I am saying (rather informing) is that Mandriva 2011 suddenly made some changes and left a big chunk of its customers in cold feet........ I fail to understand why will a Company, that has main reason to make money for its investors, by providing solutions to its customers will do that??...... I am informing about myself, other is my friend - two are in process of moving out of Mandriva..... and you know that once someone makes the shift, he hardly ever comes back to OS...... least possible if he likes the new OS better

I had some issues with Mandriva since the day it installed........ but, I was working with / around them, and sharing so others can know / guide me to solutions (if any)........ this seems to be getting to argument between me and you, sods

Damn right, its a rant....... the litmus test of a good OS platform is ease to be used by anyone, its a power hog distro right now - power backup is reduced from 4hr to less than one hour on my friends laptop (he is using gnome, not KDE)

Anyway, he has been a Mandriva lover for past three years and is shifting to fedora tomorrow...... I too am shifting to Debian, not that it matter to anyone, but just to mention........ I can give you my reasons for doing what I am about to do, but I am sure you (and me) are interested in wasting each-others time.....

be safe and be well

Well, I installed the OS in question today, after considerably gathering my courage..... it opened to terminal and no GUI, finally bugged my friend from other part of country to stay on call and guide me through, it it up

And, its not so bad...... I think main issue with most (including me) is to change the way we work, about me posting her and not on mandriva-wiki, someone hit the block button on my IP, and I am forbidden to post anything there LOL

I was very disappointed with Mandriva 2011, for simple reason that they have discontinued Gnome from this issue onwards....... what do they loose, well, KDE might be very stable and all that.... But, Gnome is easier to use specially for Graphic Designer's like myself and I am sure same it will be for people interested in Video Editing, DTP, Graphics for Broadcast media too....

All of the streams mentioned above are left in cold by company which mean business........ this was understandable if it was coming out of some bunch of people forming an organization and launching a OS/Fork, like Megia....... But definately not from company which mean business and profit, specially considering that most people find it easy to handle a Gnome than KDE....... I started KDE today, Gosh, opened and closed the window instantly, its scary!!

Most of all, Why would you like to loose you dedicated customer's??

downloaded it twice!!.... and from different locations

with ubunty, dual boot did happen, but it crashed

Mint, did not install on dual boot at all..... no error message, no message at all rather, it just did not install....... I even left it on overnight twice, wont move

Mint I tried before Mandriva, and was trying to get it install on dual boot....... it wont just install on dual boot on my machine, and I was very worried about font system, and than I found Mandriva, problem solved and Mint went out of window!!

Mint was a choice of Linux, but that was before I came to know about Mandriva...... two things went against it

1. I does not come with most of the softwares I want to use...... you need to download them as and when needed

2. It does not support Windows fonts....... getting into searching fonts, comparing them, finalizing them and getting you machine ready with proper choice of fonts on it is a big bitch for any serious designer....... I enjoyed the flexibility given by Mandriva to use windows fonts (TTF) by right clicking and installing them

There is not other distro that offers this flexibility, you can well understand importance of issue if I maintain the library of 2500 fonts and increasing the collection when I find a good font!!

one of my friend is into trying new distro's, he faced crashing problem with ubuntu...... others he liked, but in his words "other distro's are good cars, but Mandriva is Porsche!!"

Stating personal experience, My requirement was that distro should be stable and usable like windows.....

Tried Ubuntu: Hated the GUI, and it for into habit of crashing!!......... hardly get to use it, the installer came almost naked and without any softwares (from company or third party), it was a pain

Than I tried Mint: I loved its GUI from screen shots I had seen on google, but it won't get installed on my Comp, somehow

(One major issue I has was fonts, because I am Graphic Designer into serious corporate communication...... I am fussy about fonts and wanted to use most of fonts I had collected over years!!)

Than I came across "Mandriva", a very stable system...... uses TTF fonts as it is, before shifting to Linux I had already found out about gimp, inkscape and scribus, tried and loved them over my Adobe CS........ so, for me it will be Mandriva, there are some cons that I can think of..... but, mostly as I am a new user of it and they will go away as time passes by

There is one other Linux I would have loved to try, PCLinux Gnome...... but, its gone out of business!!