Download is easy, if a bit lengthy due to the large ISO size. The distribution is still a "hybrid ISO" image, which means that you can create a bootable USB stick by simply using the dd utility - or of course you can burn it to a DVD. When you boot the ISO, you get the first look at the new drive for "simplicity" at Mandriva. The boot menu has two items, "Launch System" and "Install System". That's it, no other options. It doesn't get much simpler than that - even the splash screen is a solid light blue background with the Mandriva logo, no fancy graphics or dancing penguins here. The installation process is very similar to previous Mandriva releases, but I ran into two somewhat worrying problems. First, when setting up the disk layout, it came up with a message that said the partition table on /dev/sdb was so badly corrupted that it was unreadable, and asked if it was ok to lose all partition information on that device. Yikes! Fortunately, that is the USB stick I was installing from, so I was pretty sure that it wouldn't really do anything to it, and I didn't much care if it did, but a message like that is likely to scare away a lot of inexperienced potential users. Second, during the initial boot after completing installation, it asked for my country - but Switzerland wasn't in the list! Swaziland was there, but not Switzerland. Hmmm. I just left it on U.S.A. and figured I'll straighten that out after I complete the installation.
The basic KDE desktop has been customized rather nicely by Mandriva, as shown above. On the left side of the panel are icons for Firefox and Thunderbird, Clementine (Music Player), Kopete (Messenger) and Dolphin (File Manager). On the right side there are the usual icons and controls for networking, sound, bluetooth and batter, plus a new one for the Mandriva Sync client, and "Stack Folder" icons for Documents and Downloads. StackFolder is a new development in KDE for access to frequently used files and directories.
Clicking on the KDE Menu icon (at the bottom left of the screen) brings up this menu:
Zowie, now there's something new for Mandriva and/or KDE. It looks sort of like the shell/launcher in Gnome 3 and Unity. There are three tabs at the bottom, which give you the "Welcome" view, which is the default, continaing recently used applications and the list of places; the "Applications" view, with a fairly typical categorized list of applications (Internet, Office, Graphics, etc), and "Time Frame", which will do something with Nepomuk that I have not figured out yet. At first glance this looks like it might be a pretty good compromise between the traditional desktops we have been used to for years and the new directions that Gnome 3 and Unity want to take. Hmmm. These are interesting times...
Functionally, I have so far only installed this release on my Lenovo S10-3s - I chose this one not only because it was handy, but because it can be a difficult case for Linux distributions because of the Broadcom 4313 WiFi adapter and the Synaptics ClickPad touchpad. So far it has worked out pretty well. The ClickPad works very well, including left and right click and drag-and-drop functions. I'm now anxious to see how that part works on my HP dm1-3105 with the "newer" ClickPad. The 4313 WiFi adapter was, well, about as expected. Mandriva gets extra points for at least knowing that this adapter exists and can be a problem, but loses them immediately because they have the brcm80211 driver blacklisted by default, so it uses the older wl driver. They also don't seem to know about the problem with the acer_wmi driver that interferes with the 4313 adapter on the Lenovo netbooks. The bottom line on this is that you need to go to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-brcm80211.conf, remove the line which says "blacklist brcm80211" and add two lines saying "blacklist acer_wmi" and "blacklist wl". Then reboot and wireless networking should work.
In summary, my opinion of the new Mandriva release so far is generall positive. It looks good and it seems to work well. I will try it next on my HP netbook, and see how it does with the new ClickPad (I'm hopeful) and the Ralink 5390 WiFi adapter (I'm not hopeful). Then I will try it on another netbook with the Broadcom 4313 WiFi, but without the acer_wmi problem. I will post the result here soon.
jw 29/8/2011
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Looks like a good first impression. Mandrake 8.0 was the first version of Linux that I used daily, so I still have a fondness for Mandriva. I've discovered (and my LUG confirms) that there are some laptops that just don't get along with Debian-based systems very well, and Mandriva is a great alternative for a general use system - plenty of games, and a good set of applications for most non-programmers. My mother-in-law's laptop either runs Mandriva or PCLinuxOS, depending on which is most recent. She has no complaints.
Update: I have installed Mandriva 2011.0 on two more netbooks:
- Samsung NF310: Pretty much as I had hoped. The only minor "problem" is that is comes up using the "wl" driver on the Broadcom 4313 WiFi adapter. The solution is a bit easier than I had thought; just remove the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-brcm80211.conf and reboot. If you want to be extra certain, change the one line in that file to say "blacklist wl".
- HP Pavilion dm1-3105ez: Pretty much as I had feared. The ClickPad is not handled properly, and the Ralink 5390 WiFi adapter is not recognized. The Ralink driver can be compiled and installed as I have descibed previously, and WiFi then works. The ClickPad is hopeless (have I mentioned how much I dislike the ClickPad?).
jw
I tried my first version of Mandrake at Version 6.5, and regularly used it from Version 8.0 to somewhere around Version 10-11. Mandrake, which was renamed to Mandriva somewhere in that vicinity, ran into all kinds of problems, the kinds of things that have plagued its career. Still, I have long enjoyed using the Mandrake and Mandriva Cooker. However, as alluded to in this article, the work that was being done for this release, while perhaps worth it in the long run, really created a lot of chaos, and at least twice during the testing cycle, for the first time ever, I found it to be completely unusable.
I may have persisted with it and helped with the testing, but in view of business and political changes, which seem to happen at least once or twice every couple of years, I just got tired of working through them with so many other worthwhile alternatives that are also available. One of the more recent alternatives, Mageia, was in fact created by developers who were released about a year ago from the Mandriva organization.
I have found Mageia to possess all but one of the Mandriva attributes, and a few that I believe are more suitable for my interests. Mandriva still has some of the finest art work, and their default offerings exceed the default Mageia offerings, but the Mageia Cooker has been a lot more usable during its testing cycle, and there is not the constant threat of yet another change in corporate direction; Mageia is a community-only development, not an enterprise or business development.
Both of them are still easy to install and use, and now that Mandriva 2011 is ready to be released, I am sure it will still have many of its fine characteristics that have always made it a top ten favorite among Linux DistroWatch downloaders, but for my personal interests, Mageia has gained favor over Mandriva. Isn't it nice to have a choice? I've made my choice, and at least in this family, I've now opted to replace Mandriva with Mageia.
At least 80% of my other favorite systems are Debian-based or Debian-inspired; Mageia is among a handful of systems I use that come from the Mandrake heritage.
Make sure you read the errata if you have an ATI Radeon card, HD4650 in my case. There are notes in the errata about this card. It will freeze during installation and a power down is the only recourse. Inserting a simple nomodeset command in the init string will make things work and you'll need to update the a new ATI driver after updating, but its pretty simple to do. I would suggest first putting in the nomodeset into the Launch Mandriva to make sure it works on your machine before doing the Install Mandriva.
That aside, it is a nice upgrade; although I think the overly simple main menu, like Unity etc, detracts rather than enhances things. As for apps; I'm glad they put Clementine as the default music player. It is obviously a fork from the old Amarok code. I had forgotten how much I liked Amarok when it was a world-class music player, it has slipped a good bit lately; I really like Clementine.