Mandriva 2009 Spring Review
Friday, 1. May 2009, 20:09:40
The time to upgrade to newer distribution came and it was Mandriva 2009 Spring that caught my attention. Got a Mandriva One KDE iso and in less than 30 minutes I had a working Linux distribution.
First impression
Maybe the theme wasn't the nicest KDE theme I have seen, but it's possible to live with it and even more possible to live after change it.
Mandriva has modified KDE4 which maintains the classic KDE3 look. Standard menu and desktop layout are there by default, but it's possible to switch to widget mode and enable the new Kickoff menu.
It boots fast! And that is really important for me, I'm like most of you... Not a big fan of waiting.
Hardware support
My Atheros wireless worked out of the box, multimedia keys are there and most of the things you would expect, the only thing I needed to change was model for my soundcard, to make the jack sensing work. Also ALSA is routed to use pulseaudio by default so there seems to be no sound issues.
Opera flash problem
The only disappointment was, that Adobe Flash didn't work on Opera, but that was solved by removing 'nspluginwrapper' it seems Opera tried to use this one first and it somehow didn't want to cooperate.
Conclusion
Mandriva 2009 Spring is really worth considering if you're looking for a nice KDE based distribution (GNOME might be nice too, but I haven't tried that). It's fast to boot and use. Something I will use at least until OpenSuSE 11.2 comes out in November.
First impression
Maybe the theme wasn't the nicest KDE theme I have seen, but it's possible to live with it and even more possible to live after change it.
Mandriva has modified KDE4 which maintains the classic KDE3 look. Standard menu and desktop layout are there by default, but it's possible to switch to widget mode and enable the new Kickoff menu.
It boots fast! And that is really important for me, I'm like most of you... Not a big fan of waiting.
Hardware support
My Atheros wireless worked out of the box, multimedia keys are there and most of the things you would expect, the only thing I needed to change was model for my soundcard, to make the jack sensing work. Also ALSA is routed to use pulseaudio by default so there seems to be no sound issues.
Opera flash problem
The only disappointment was, that Adobe Flash didn't work on Opera, but that was solved by removing 'nspluginwrapper' it seems Opera tried to use this one first and it somehow didn't want to cooperate.
Conclusion
Mandriva 2009 Spring is really worth considering if you're looking for a nice KDE based distribution (GNOME might be nice too, but I haven't tried that). It's fast to boot and use. Something I will use at least until OpenSuSE 11.2 comes out in November.
WIDGETIZE