TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

This rant is the result of feedback I received from my original rant on the Mandriva 2008.1 Free DVD. Mandriva apparently pays attention to user experiences (no matter how obscure the site may be) and offered some suggestions to help address my problems.

Mandriva (when it was called Mandrake) was one of my first exposures to Linux. It was solid, it was pretty, and it made Linux feel welcoming and fun. If one thing can be said throughout the releases since Mandrake 8, it's that whatever the company name might have been the distribution has remained consistently pleasant to look at.

I had originally started to do this rant based solely on the Mandriva "One" KDE version since I didn't want to download the DVD, but I received an email request that I look at the full free DVD. I think that's a fair request. I have divided my experiences below based on which version I used.

Install (One):

The LiveCD booted up and brought me to a characteristically Mandriva desktop. I was asked whether I wanted to use no desktop effects, or use either Compiz Fusion or Metisse. I wasn't familiar with Metisse, so I ran Compiz Fusion.

Wobbly windows and all worked well. This was promising. I ran the installer, which set up the partitions and immediately began the install. Once it was done it asked me to reboot.

First boot brought me to a screen that asked me to set up my network. It detected the wireless card and asked for the drivers. I inserted the driver disc but it wouldn't mount, and since at this point the desktop hadn't loaded yet, I couldn't mount it manually. I cancelled the operation for now.

It then had me set the root password and create a regular user. I was then taken to a screen that said Mandriva was installed but no network connection was found. Yeah, I know. Working on it.

I then was able to mount the CDROM using the little CD icon on the taskbar, re-run the network configuration dialog and I saw wireless networks. Unfortunately all of them were closed, but that's not Mandriva's fault.

MP3 and WMV/MPG playback were included. The auto-configuration of my 3D drivers was a nice touch. It's a pity there wasn't a single 3D-enabled game in the default selection (or any games at all, for that matter). If Ubuntu can get away with at least Solitaire, so can Mandriva.

I wanted to see if there was anything on the LiveCD I could install after the fact, so I fired up the "Configure Media" tool with the idea that I'd just add the CD as a repository and go from there. It insisted on using online repositories. Not good.

I thought perhaps the Free edition DVD could be used as a repository. Again, no luck. I tried just manually digging through the DVD and double-clicking RPMs. Unfortunately I ran into dependency problems.

What this all amounts to is a very pretty, but functionally useless, distribution for me. I'd have to wait around for an open wireless network before it would be usable for anything other than word processing.

Install (Free DVD):

The Free DVD (as was pointed out to me by Mandriva) has both more and less software than "One." Even though it's a DVD and it offers choices for things like desktop environment and a bunch of other programs (games included) it does not include the proprietary things that One installs, such as Nvidia drivers.

I booted the DVD and ran the installer. I was asked whether I wanted the Gnome or KDE desktop. Although I'm usually more of a Gnome fan, I've always thought of Mandriva as more of a KDE-centric distribution, so I chose that. The nice thing about the DVD (as opposed to the CD) is that I have the choice of either and can add the other one later.

Once the install was finished, I was asked to set up the root and regular user and brought to a final configuration screen. This let me set the time zone, X Windows settings, and the services that are enabled by default. That last one is unique to Mandriva, and I greatly appreciate it.

I was able to install drivers for my Broadcom wireless card from the Windows driver disc. The only hiccup along the way was that I couldn't get the CD to mount from inside the wizard (same as Mandriva One). I had to exit out of the wizard, mount the disc, then run the wizard again. It was no less annoying the second time.

I installed what I thought were the proper tools to get my Nvidia drivers working (gcc, make, kernel sources) but every time I tried I got an error trying to load the kernel module. This effectively grounds 3D on Mandriva Free without an internet connection from which to download Mandriva-specific drivers.

I received a confused email about that last paragraph, so let me explain. Yes, I got my wireless drivers working. Yes, I could just download Nvidia drivers from the Mandriva non-free repository if I lucked out on an open network. However for the sake of the rant I'm trying to stick with what works out of the box, not what I can add on after the fact.

MP3 and WMV/MPG playback were included by default. It was small comfort with no 3D capability.

Software Selection (One):

OpenOffice, GIMP, Firefox, and Pidgin were present, as is standard for most distros these days. Neither Java nor GCC were installed by default. I guess this is just a quirk of mine, since I imagine Mandriva's target audience wouldn't necessarily need a real Sun Java VM or GCC build utilities. I do however, so it's annoying.

The total lack of any kind of game (even Solitaire) confused me. Do users of Mandriva One never need to kill time in an amusing way? I don't see why something wouldn't be included, even if it's just the default KDE games. If they're strapped for space, Ace of Penguins is included on Damn Small Linux (which is only 50MB for the whole distro). That would work.

Software Selection (Free DVD):

OpenOffice, GIMP, Firefox, and Pidgin were present. Neither Java nor GCC were installed by default on this one either. Color me irked. I endeavored to find out whether or not these were available on the DVD (after all, it's 4GB of *something*). Sadly, only the GNU version of Java was available, but GCC was there.

I dug around the DVD and found a few other interesting options. Innotek Virtualbox (my favorite VM software) was on the disc, so I threw that in. Also I couldn't help but toss in OpenArena, Wormux, Frozen-Bubble and Chromium. Unfortunately, I installed these before I figured out there would be no 3D support. Damn.

Eclipse was included on the DVD, but without a proper version of Java I was dead in the water for work-related programming. There was a JVM available (which was installed alongside Eclipse on the DVD), but it was the GCJ stack. I require Sun's JVM for my work.

Conclusion:

There's a lot of good going on here, but there are still several gotchas for me. I was bothered by the lack of a proper Java VM and the total lack of games on One, and it's obvious that the Free edition isn't for me any more than gNewSense. What the Free Software Foundation calls "Free" I consider synonymous with "doesn't work with my hardware."

With a proper VM I could have given slightly higher marks, and believe me I wanted to. I will give them credit that most of my complaints could be fixed with an internet connection, so most of you won't find 2008 nearly as trying. I can only rate based on my particular situation, however, and at the moment that doesn't include reliable internet.

The ability to use the install disc (or the DVD) as a repository for packages would be greatly helpful to me. Perhaps I'm alone in that opinion, but there it is.

If I could put the two of these releases together into one DVD, I'd have something special. I liked the extra packages on Free and the proprietary drivers on One. Perhaps that's why they want you to buy the PowerPack. One day if I have some extra cash I might do a rant on that one.

I would like to give special thanks to Mandriva and particularly Adam Williamson, their community manager. He hashed out some issues I'd had the first time I ran through this and ended up helping me correct some things.

It's encouraging to see such an active interest in improvement from a Linux company. Although neither of these releases worked for me, they were really close. Were my circumstances different I could see myself using Mandriva. Perhaps one day I will.