Today I’d like to take a look at a newly released distribution, Mandriva 2010. In the past I’ve found it to be a well accomplished and easy to use desktop distro, even if the last release wasn’t quite as stellar as I’d hoped. How would this version stack up? Let’s find out.

I also talked about Mandriva 2010 on episode 121 of the Linux Outlaws podcast if you want too hear more.

Vital Stats:
Distro base – Red Hat (Forked many moons ago though it has to be said)
Packaging – .rpm (Managed by URPMI)
Linux Kernel – 2.6.31.5-desktop586-1mnb
Default Desktop – KDE 4.3 or Gnome 2.28

Introduction:

Boot Menu

I still remember the first time I saw Mandriva, or Mandrake as it was then known. It was way back in 2002 when a university friend introduced me to this alternative operating system known as Linux. I really knew nothing about it at the time, but obviously that’s changed over the years. Real old school Linux users who were bootstrapping Slackware back in 93 will laugh at that, I’m still wet behind the ears in comparison. But this was the moment my world changed, at least in software terms. I defend Mandriva when people make jokes about it being yesterdays distro, perhaps because it was my first exposure to Linux as a whole, but also because I think it has a lot to offer. It’s true that after the heights of 2000 Mandriva fell off the pace a little, and then Ubuntu burst onto the scene in a brown blur, but it shouldn’t be written off by any means. I returned to it with Mandriva 2008 and would still rank that as one of the best desktop distro releases of recent years. 2009 wasn’t quite as good, I had some problems getting things working on my hardware, but 2010 offers renewed promise. With these thoughts floating around my excuse for a brain, I downloaded both the Gnome and KDE versions of Mandriva One 2010 on release day. Read the rest of this entry »