First Impressions on Mandriva 2007
By spiderman05
@spiderman05 (851)
Canada
October 8, 2007 10:25am CST
I was bored two days ago, so I decided to give Mandriva 2007 a try. Well, my first goal was to get Mandriva on a USB key, though I did not manage to do so. Instead, I downloaded Mandriva One, the compact version of this Linux distribution.
I must say that Metisse and its 3D effects caught my eye and lured me to upgrade to Mandriva 2007. I have been using the 2006 version for a long while now (actually since the release of the free CDs) and I was on Mandrake 9.x and 10.x before.
I prefered an upgrade to a fresh installation to avoid the headaches resulting from recovering my old working environment. The upgrade process went without any glitches.
First thing I noticed when I started Mandriva 2007 is that the 3D effects were not available. I had to explicitly install them from the Mandriva control center. Also, I was not satisfied with the sound quality, so I had to switch from the ALSA driver to an OSS one.
More tuning is still needed, like importing Windows' fonts, customizing my KDE panel and setting up my wireless connection.
KDE is not very responsive. Though, this was the case with the live version, so I guess this slowness is just a matter of a poor configuration of the display and not of a not-so-fast CPU.
Some positive things about the 2007 version:-Amarok never worked with my previous distributions. It is fully functional now and whatever I play with Amarok goes on my last fm playlist, a cool synergy.
-Mandriva 2007 comes with a better version of Gaim, the instant messaging software.
Have you tried Mandriva 2007? If so, what is your overall impression on this distribution? Did you encounter any problems especially with Metisse?
5 responses
@onedollar (781)
• Belgium
11 Oct 07
The thing about Linux I hate is the amount of tuning it needs to get it properly working. Compare this to OSX which has all I need and works out of the box.
3 people like this
@swaroop_sv2003 (531)
• India
17 Oct 07
I have tried Mandriva one or two year back. Due to some reason I am not able to adjust with it. I always feel opensuse is a superior Linux Distro and I try to compare all the other distros with opensuse. I don't like the default icons of Mandriva (even though we can change it). The Mandrake configuration utility (I think it is called drake) is not that good as YAST in opensuse (even though it is better than anything provided by distros like Ubuntu, fedora etc). The KDE menu layout is another area almost all the distro fails when comparing with opensuse. I don't like the arrangement of the KDE menu in any of the distros (other than opensuse) I tried. But lately I saw some good reviews about Mandriva 2008 and I may try it out.
2 people like this
@swaroop_sv2003 (531)
• India
19 Oct 07
No opensuse don't have a live cd version. It got one CD version, kde based CD and Gnome based CD and also a DVD too. You may download any of those CDs and install it. If you are planning to install opensuse from the CD make sure that you don't select the additional repositories before installing. Selecting it will pose a problem if you got a slow internet connection. On selecting it opensuse will download and install additional softwares from opensuse repositories which will delay the complete installation of the system. After installing opensuse you can add those repositories from yast and install additional softwares.
1 person likes this
@spiderman05 (851)
• Canada
18 Oct 07
Thank you for your comment swaroop. I have never tried Open Suse. I got a free DVD 2 years ago with a Linux magazine, but I did not try it out as I already started working with Mandriva.
YAST is better than rpmdrake. I tried it when I used the DSL distribution. Though, it is always possible to add RPM repositories and other media rmpdrake. This was an attempt made by Mandriva to make their RPM utility as user look close to YAST.
There some bugs with rpmdrake though. Sometimes it fails detecting the installation DVD and keeps asking for it, quiet frustrating.
The menus of Mandriva 2008 are much simpler than those of the previous releases. There are no more menu items that lead to the same application.
@spiderman05 (851)
• Canada
19 Oct 07
I will check if Suse has a live CD version. If so, I will download it and check it out.
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
25 Oct 07
I have been using Mandriva 2007 Spring for a while and I am very happy with it.
I have had various issues and problems with numerous Linux distributions, but mandriva has given me no trouble at all so far.
I found the wireless internet connection rather straight forward, although I have not tried matisse.
1 person likes this
@andben (1075)
• Italy
9 Oct 07
I am using Mandriva 2007 and I like it.
I hope you installed the 2007.1 Spring Edition.
It has some problems, I agree with you, but some of them are simply to correct.
As regards for USB key, simply make an update of your kernel: go to the control center and search for updates and download at least the update of the kernel, it should be kernel-2.6.17-15 version.
3D effects are disables on default, if you want to enable them, go to the control center and then hardware tab: you can see the button configure 3D effects: in this section you can choose the combination you prefer.
I agree with with about the sound quality and Amarok, I like The function of Amarok of searching lyrics of the song you are listening to.
However, Mandriva 2008.0 is out.
@spiderman05 (851)
• Canada
9 Oct 07
Hi Andben,
I have just missed Mandriva 2008 by a couple of days. As my system is on a tuning phase, I will just upgrade to Mandriva 2008 right away tonight.
I will let you know how things go, if you did not upgrade to 2008 yet.
1 person likes this
@spiderman05 (851)
• Canada
11 Oct 07
I did the upgrade 2 days ago. It went without any glitches. Microsoft fonts were imported without any problems (something I failed to do with mandriva 2007). There is also a new application to import documents and settings from the Windows partition.
Gaim instant messaging is called Pigdin now and it has a much nicer interface.
I gave up on the 3D effects. The results are even worse (when using such effects) with Mandriva 2008. It also comes with a KDE4 preview, but I did not dare intalling it.
The sound is kind of low and still needs some tuning. Also, my Wifi card was recognized but Mandriva failed to configure it completely. I can still bring my Wifi interface manually and using ndiswrapper.
Also, the KDE menu organization is somewhat different from that of the earlier versions. Many redundant menu items have been removed.
1 person likes this
@adquirante (232)
• Philippines
6 Dec 07
I used to run Mandrake before on an older machine. Now I've installed Fedora Core 6 on this machine and I can't access the Windows partitions I used to be able to access with Mandrake. I'm thinking of changing to Debian, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to access my Windows partition with that either. Does anyone know if the Windows partition can be accessed in Mandriva? I'd like to give it a try.
1 person likes this
@spiderman05 (851)
• Canada
6 Dec 07
Adquirante,
Yes it is possible to access thw Windows partition from Mandriva 2008. In my case, Mandriva automatically mounts the Win partition when the system starts up. My Windows files are accessible from directory /media/hd.
