Comments on: Distro Review: Mandriva One 2010

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:08:32 +0000

@michael – I haven’t used the 64 bit version to be honest. I don’t tend to bother with them at the moment. I only have 2gb of RAM in my laptop and when I’ve tried 64bit distros I didn’t see improvements in the kind of tasks I do. In future I might try it again to access more RAM perhaps. I’m glad the 32bit works well for you. 64bit works well for many others as well of course, just not my thing right now.

By: michael

michael — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:05:09 +0000

Dan,

I used Mandriva 2009 a little bit last year, but got a bit frustrated with the Intel graphics problems (now resolved with recent Linux kernel versions) that kept me from switching full-time from Windows, which I finally did a couple of months ago.

I’d tried installing the 64-bit edition of Mandriva 2010 when it came out (actually, I’d tried the Betas and at least one Release Candidate) to no avail. It locked up on me with a black screen, leaving me to hard reboot into a networkless LXDE desktop (I’d selected Gnome, IIRC.)

On a whim, I downloaded the 32-bit iso and flashed a USB stick, just to see if there was any better luck to be had.

This is a NICE distro. I wish they had a 64-bit version in a < 700MB download like, oh, every other major distro that offers 64-bit seems to do, but this is lightning-fast on my machine, seems much snappier than other distros. Might be a keeper.

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 14:34:37 +0000

@Gokhan – I like the Mandriva KDE4 implementation a lot and I’ve talked about it often, so I won’t bore people with all that again. I think it’s a much overlooked distro though and it has a lot to offer. Glad you’re enjoying it.

By: Gökhan

Gökhan — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 04:02:25 +0000

Hey Dan, after installing Mandriva Free KDE on my main machine I can´t confirm this either. At least it´s not shown in task manager and it really seems to be their theme. I must say that
a) this is the best KDE distro I tried because KDE is very fast (yepp…feels light) and the developers customized it very well. For example FF doesn´t feel “out of place”. All in all this isn´t just a generic KDE 4 desktop (like Kubuntu).
b) Mandriva is much more userfriendly than I expected!
c) I had no KDE installation problems (but I installed from the Onex64 DVD)

Before I´ve installed an LXDE version [http://www.mandrivauser.de/wordpress/?p=454&cpage=1] on my old Laptop (1,6 GHz Centrino, 512 MB Ram, 32 MB Video Memory) and that´s why I thought it´s the same (LXDE = Openbox + PCManFM + …). Looks really similar.
Btw, the LXDE version is also very good. Lately I´ve been keen on testing LXDE desktops (most unoffical versions), Fedora12, PCLos, OpenSuse 11.1, #! (though more minimalist Openbox) and I found Mandriva to be the best compromise between speed (see specs above) and usability for me.

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:55:42 +0000

Gokhan – That’s an interesting theory but I don’t know how to test and confirm this. I don’t see any real evidence of Openbox in there, it feels very much like KDE4. You get the plasma widgets on the desktop and so on. Who knows, you might be onto something though.

By: Gökhan

Gökhan — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:55:12 +0000

could it be that Mandriva KDE acutally consists of Openbox running on top of KDE? When I looked at the screenshots window borders looked exactly like Openbox, exactly. Could be the reason for it being a bit speedier on KDE than OpenSuse.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:31:32 +0000

@antton – I didn’t notice any problems with fonts on Mandriva myself, but then I wouldn’t claim to be any kind of designer or artist. Maybe I just didn’t notice, everything looked ok to me. I’m surprised msttcorefonts didn’t fix it, but I’m sure you’re right. You’re also likely using Gnome in Ubuntu I’m guessing, perhaps there’s some difference in the way Gnome and KDE render fonts I’m not sure. It’s a shame it didn’t work out for you.

By: antton

antton — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:45:16 +0000

Mandriva 2010 One KDE is great. The only disappoitment is still the fonts, especially in Firefox. They look better in Ubuntu than in Mandriva. Even though i installed msttcorefonts and handle that libfreetype6

echo /.+freetype6.+plf/ >> /etc/urpmi/skip.list

rpm -e –nodeps libfreetype6

urpmi –excludemedia ‘PLF Free’ libfreetype6

It helped quite a lot but as i wrote the fonts in Ubuntu still look better.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:02:31 +0000

@Gunter – Looks are always a matter of personal preference but I like the KDE4 setup in Mandriva. I think it looks pretty good. Each to their own

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:59:32 +0000

@Martin – I will be getting onto Mint 8 when it’s out so I’ll try to make a note to test Gnome Shell at the same time. Fab actually reviewed it on our Linux Outlaws recording tonight. That show won’t be out for a few days though. I haven’t tried it myself yet. I do love Gnome though, it’s no secret