Oct
5
2006
Review : Mandriva 2007
Posted by luna6
Mandriva you say? To be honest I haven’t used Mandriva since the days when they were known as Mandrake. They always had one of the more user friendly Linux operating systems around, but made some questionable decisions. They changed their release schedule to yearly and the software that came with Mandrake seemed out of date. Their Drake Conf tool was good for the new user to Linux, but was cumbersomb to use on a daily basis. They did also have that VERY sinister looking duck as their mascot by version 10 or so. When I saw that duck with its shining pupils, it was bye bye Mandrake.
Since that time I have become perfectly happy with Ubuntu and Fedora, but decided to give Mandriva another chance since their latest version sports some very nice software. Some of the more tantalizing offerings Mandriva 2007 has :
KDE 3.5.4
XORG 7.1
Kernel 2.17
OpenOffice 2.0.3
Gaim 2.0 b3
AIGLX and Xgl 3D-accelerated desktop w/drak3d for configuration
Well since Mandriva is no longer known as Mandrake (they bought/merged with Conectiva) I guess I can’t refer to their software as Mandy anymore. Oh well. There are a lot of positives about the new version of Mandriva. First thing to get sorted out are the different variations of Mandriva 2007. Similar to the way you can download Ubuntu (Gnome) or Kubuntu (KDE) live installer cd’s, Mandriva offers a single cd KDE or Gnome flavored Live CD installer. An interesting feature with these installation discs is that they include both i586 and x86_64 versions. The installer will automatically detect your cpu and install the appropriate version. If you have a 64 bit chip and prefer to install the 32 bit version, make sure that you hit F3 on the first boot up screen and then hit F6 to select the 32 bit version.
Mandriva-One-2007-KDE1.torrent(includes non-free drivers)
Mandriva-One-2007-Gnome1.torrent (includes non-free drivers)
Mandriva Free 2007 DVD (does not include non-free drivers)
If you need a localised version in another language besides English look on this page.
The live cd was absolutely impressive and the first one I could ever recall that will enable XGL if you have the appropriate video card (note you need to download KDE1 or Gnome1 install cds with non-free drivers to have this option). From there it was as simple as clicking the Live Install icon and clicking the boxes through a few menu’s. I think anybody, including windows users would be able to install Mandriva 2007 as long as they had their disc partitioned for Linux. Besides that, everything just worked, easy. Not only was the installation problem free and about as easy possible, but the installation automatically installed drivers for my Wint-TV-PVR-250 video card, as well as the DVICO FusionHDTV 5 card. With newer kernels (2.17 and up) all Linux distro’s should install the DVICO FusionHDTV 5 automatically (it should be built into the kernel), but this is the first time I ever had an OS install drivers for the Win-TV-PVR-250 card. Not only was I impressed with that aspect, but once I booted into Mandriva 2007, there was KdeTV app installed on the desktop and which worked with both of my tv cards. I was really impressed with that!
Once I booted into Mandriva 2007 first thing I did was check out the XGL eye candy. Im not really a fan of the wobbly windows, but the spinning desktop was awesome! A neat feature that I have not seen before is that if you hold down the ctrl+alt keys and press the up or down arrown key..then the screen flattens and shows you all desktops. Beyond that there is the wobbly windows as well as the windows becoming translucent and more. Kudos to Mandriva for including a compiz configuration tool to enable / disable certain effectsl. Im not a fan of the wobbly windows, so I did disable that effect. Also I was slightly dissappointed to find out that XGL did not play nice with my tv video cards. Having XGL enabled made the video in KdeTv extremely blurry. So I ended up disabling XGL for now, but I think with more time I can figure out a fix for that.
Beyond that Mandriva 2007 includes their “Mandriva Linux Control Center 2007,” which is strangely enough, accesable by clicking “Configure Your Computer” in the system menu. In the directory for “Mount Points” nice gui apps allowed me to easily set up NFS mount points and mange NFS shares. The same applied with Samba mount points and managing the configuration of Samba. These should appeal heavily to folks coming over from Windows. Setting up a firewall was very intuitive and had no problems settings that up as well.
Multimedia was very good after installing additional packages. As with most KDE distributions Amarok comes included and I would say that is the best music management / player in existence. KdeTV worked flawlessly and like I mentioned earlier I did not have to install anything for my Win-TV-PVR-250 and DVICO FusionHDTV5 tv cards. First time on any platform that ever happened. I did want to install additional programs so I used http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ to get the commands to update urpmi. This is what I pasted into the command line as root user :
urpmi.addmedia main rsync://rsync.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/mandrake/devel/2007.0/
i586/media/main/release with media_info/synthesis.hdlist.cz
urpmi.addmedia contrib ftp://ftp.cise.ufl.edu/pub/mirrors/mandrake/Mandrakelinux/
devel/2007.0/i586/media/contrib/release with media_info/synthesis.hdlist.cz
From there I wanted to add the PLF repository so I typed in :
urpmi.addmedia free ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/plf/mandriva/non-free/
2007.0/i586
Then not sure if its necessary but I wanted to update the sources so I typed in :
urpmi.update -a
Then it was to install some additional applications:
urpmi vlc xmms banshee mplayer easytag kaffeine soundconverter
Now I have all my multimedia setup.
Mandrive 20007 is a very impressive distribution that sets a high benchmark for Ubuntu’s Edgy Eft, Fedora Core 6, and OpenSuse 10.2 to shoot for. Some of the more impressive features about Mandriva 2007 would be its live installer cd with XGL included and functioning. Best live cd I have used. The hardware detection abilitity on Mandriva 2007 was also one of the best I have used on any platform. My tv video cards were installed without any type of intervention on my part and my digital camera and removable hard drive were mounted when plugged in. The new orange theme desktop is bright and colorful, but not overbearing. I do remember that evil looking duck they had on their splash screen back in the Mandrake days, so the graphics has come a long way. The Mandrake Control Center is nice and friendly, although I prefer to set things up via command line. Nice to have that option anyways. Although I will be using Ubuntu Dapper mainly until Edgy Eft comes out, I should be dual booting into Mandriva 2007 often. Mandriva 2007 would be especially recommended for people wanting to try Linux for the first time or wanting to try Linux again after messing with it briefly in the past. Nice job Mandriva!
***Review of Mandriva 2007 Spring Edition can be read here***
Comments
25 Comments so far
Incredible! I’ve been using Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) for a bit now,and thought I would try out another distro, and so far, Mandriva has been increidble
Cool! Never thought about it! Thanx for the review.
I Have installed mandriva one in my PC and PIII 750MHZ, when kde starts i can’t see my hard disk and i can’t mount it. I don’t know what cuould be wrong.
& how to run all aplication that came with mandriva, like wine,phyton,etc?
mandriva is great
i love her
guys
I Have installed mandriva one in my PC and old amd k7 500mhz, in verbose mode an error message says something like “mount:function not implement”, when kde starts i can’t see my hard disk and i can’t mount it. I don’t know what cuould be wrong
i already install mandrive 2007, and find some review to know bout mandriva. thanks for review
seems like a good review to me whats your problem?
I downloaded Mandriva One 2007 Gnome after playing with the livecd, decided to install it it on a hardisk with Windows already installed. Everything seemed to work fine, but at the end, it did not boot, only stayed there waiting…
Excelent rewiev.
J.
“Sorry you didnt pass math !!” since when has 5 + 5 been anything but 10. Seems to me this is a “Praise Mandrake/Mandriva” site before you can actually post anything that isn’t such.
Andres : Xmoto and Neverball runs with 3d Acceleration for me on Mandriva 2007 and my Nvidia card. Absolutely love Mandriva 2007 except the default fonts are ugly, but I’m sure there is a way to fix this.
The best (live) linux distrib ever.
Tested and approved.
Amazing !
Just one question:
With XGL and SUSE i had a problem, XGL worked but not 3d acceleration for applications like xmoto or neverball. Is it corrected by now?
Im very excited about Mandriva 1 KDE, its up and running on my harddrive but all the tips on this page are not working.
The URPMI comes back with errors that no headers are available. I’ve been playing with Linux and Mandrake since about 98 so I am pleased that Mandriva finally included some non-free software. The XGL is awsome and working better than Sabayon I might add.
I have no DVD playback and I am also wondering if there is a way to get the Cedega engine without paying the 40 bucks?? Im still kind of a noob but I’ve been building comps since 98 and can do a lot with linux, I just want everything like Win XP including games. I think Mandriva is onto something, a complete XP replacement with the Cedega engine!!! WOW I am impressed, just cant get my updates and DVD any help would be great.
Thanks for the review, glad to see 2007 is working out so well for you :). A couple of comments: the blurry video in kdetv is likely down to the fact that the desktop acceleration technologies don’t work properly with Xv, the video output technology that uses video overlaying. Most apps that play video use Xv by default as it allows for smooth output with low CPU usage and allows effects like brightness / contrast adjustment to be implemented. If you want to use Xgl or AIGLX, you have to choose an alternative video output system that doesn’t use overlaying. With Xgl, you can use OpenGL video output, if your app supports it: with AIGLX, you have to use the old X11 / xshm output method. We included instructions for reconfiguring a lot of apps in the Errata for 2007, but we didn’t include kdetv, as I’m not sure how to make the change. If you poke around in the kdetv configuration you’ll probably find an option for changing the video output method; change it to x11 or opengl, if you can, and see if it helps. If it does, let me know where the setting is, and I’ll add a note to the errata explaining how to find it.
The other observation: now (finally!) you don’t really need to use easy URPMI to set up the basic media any more. Go to the media configuration tool, through the menus, from rpmdrake or from MCC, click the ‘Add…’ button at the right hand side, tell it you want distribution sources, pick a mirror, and wait. It’ll add main and contrib media for you. Of course, Easy URPMI is still useful for any…other media you may want to use ;)
about the themes, you can configure it :
and use the colour of the powerpack (blue) or the powerpack+ (grey)
it’s in the kcontrol center, I think
Both Mandriva One KDE1 or GNOME1 will work with XGL in live cd mode or after you install. All the install discs actually come with XGL, but the “free” cds do not come with the proprietary drivers to get XGL working in live cd mode or after the complete installation. Of course if you download the free cd (without proprietary drivers) you can install the Nvidia or Ati drivers yourself, but it is easier to just download the KDE1 or GNOME1 cd’s. (I downloaded the free dvd w/out proprietary drivers..installed the os..then installed the Nvidia drivers from their website..but XGL still wouldnt work - works from the start with the KDE1 or GNOME1 cds).
Hi, just wanted to clarify something. From your review, more specifically on the paragrah after the BT links, the way you say (write) it, you make it look like only the KDE liveCD has xgl, is that correct or the Gnome CD has it too? Thanks :)
i have been runing the 64 bit version of community.
its the best linux release of anybody ever.
enjoy it.
Nice review. Like you, Mandrake was the first Linux distribution that supported all of my hardware (laptop), espacially my display (1920×1200).
After using v10 a bit, I switched to something else (using ArchLinux now). What I didn’t like about Mandrake was the themes and all those “ducks” (they are really pinguins :). I see that they removed them, but the theme seems strange (orange??).
From your screenshot, it seems that you boot the livecd, install, reboot, and then configure the computer. I think it is way better to boot live cd, configure, press “install”, go get some sleep, and have a nice linux box after! This isn’t to hard to implement… It makes me think of installing windows…
Will try the live cd, thanx for the torrents!
Nice review. I was amuzed by the duck commnet. It an odd graphic and huge too.
Thanks for the multimedia software setup tips. I know remember setting up software manager repositories was the hardest thing about Mandriva. I suggest any one who reads this go http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ or http://mandrivausers.org/easyurpmi/ to get it working in a snap.
Have you tried out hibernate (suspend to disk) and standby/suspend (suspend to ram)? They are really important for me or laptop users. I use power management even on my desktop so it starts quicker.
About the site itself. It seems to have really small text on my computer. Other sites seem fine. I use 1024×768 or 1280×960. I tried it at 800×600 and then the side margins squish the middle. Just curious. I zoom out for the commands. They got cut off even with the small text. I zoomed in to read.
Convincing review, indeed. I’ve been toying with the idea of trying out the new live cd but this review sealed it. Thanks. :)
I agree with you: Mandriva 2007 one is the best live-CD I ever used. It is so easy to set up because hardware-detection is simply the best around. This way it really helps me getting my jobs done without playing around for hours setting up some system-details. But best at last: Mandriva 2007 combines these major features with nice eyecandy like the nes laOra-theme and the very useful AIGLX and xgl. Cheers to Mandy for that!
One thing about the article:
That wasn’t a duck, it was a penguin. It was just an odd, crazy looking penguin.
One tip for your blog:
If you’re having problems with spam you should def. get SpamKarma2 ;)
(and just FYI, I came here from mandrivausers.org - so you might get an influx of Mandriva users shortly ;) )
Thanks for the great review. Mandriva never fails to remind the users about how powerful, versatile and user-friendly a linux distro for desktops can be. Hats off to mandriva!!!