Mandriva 2008 review

[Faun]

Installed Mandriva 2008 today, was tinkering abt the usability, lo the interface is more responsive than Ubuntu Gutsy (Somehow Ubuntu is gettin bloated with every new version).

I was able to play Audio (Amarok ftw) and Video (Kaffeine ftw) out of the box. Even the installation from live cd was easier than Ubuntu.

Compiz and Metisse are two 3d composting manager by default in Mandriva 2008. So there was no need to download frontend GUI for compiz, it was already in "Configure Your Computer".

Built in firewall GUI and Network applet are intuitive, u dont need to figure out the unusual. Even a noob can handle this.

So here is my verdict over Mandriva 2008 Experience:

PROS:
1. Responsive menu and fast KDE
2. Out of box multimedia bundle, no need to download codecs.
3. Two composting 3D desktop manager : Compiz Fusion and Metisse installed by default.
4. Easier partitioning scheme.
5. Mounting partitions via graphical interface was never so easy.
6. Good recovery option (just press mcc and u can configure pretty much anything when graphical desktop stops working)

CONS:
1. I lost graphical desktop when i enabled composting using xgl, my card doesnt support this, though it was quite easy to get it back via mcc in command line.
2. Net was working in live cd but the installed one didnt seem to load pages in web browser, though every other application was able to acces net but neither browser was loading the page, solution lies in this this line

add this line: "install ipv6 /bin/true" to the file "/etc/modprobe.conf"
then this line:"net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0" to this file "/etc/sysctl.conf"

3. I converted some ntfs partitions to ext3 to finally put an end to the metamorphosis from windows to linux, but i had to use root terminal (su) to mount the ext3 partitions, but now the challenge was that the mounted partition was owned by root and normal user cant write on the partition.
So here is the trick that worked
write this command to change owner of the directory (mount point) to which the ext3 partition is mounted:

chown -R username:username /media/mountpoint

where username is the username used to login, mountpoint is just the name of directory to which the ext3 partition is mounted

then u can even chmod the mountpoint to restrict access to other users

It was an enriching experience I loved learnin new things and finding another good distro.

[Gigacore]

nice review... few screenshots would be great

[Faun]

yep will add them by 2 in the night, am out of bandwidth

[Gigacore]

Originally Posted by T159

yep will add them by 2 in the night, am out of bandwidth

Will be waiting.......