Mandriva 2009.0 - One Step Forward
Friday, 10. October 2008, 07:21:03
Yesterday, 9th October 2008, was the big day. Mandriva 2009.0 was released as scheduled. And why is that so special? Because this time Mandriva aimed for cutting edge technology and included all the goodies in the new release.
We have the latest available kernel (2.6.27 rc8), the latest KDE4 (4.1.2 released only a few days before Mandriva 2009.0 release), a brand new design for the Installer and for the famous Mandriva Control Center and many other new stuff.
But this is about my first week with it ... yes, I couldn't wait for the final release, so I installed it from cooker (development mirror) last weekend.
I'm amazed... It is so different ... so new and shiny.
At first, you can observe the new installer. It's much more better looking than any previous one. By design it resembles a little bit of Win95, but just as a bad memory...
The installation is very fast. I've chosen default KDE4 installation and it take me about 15 minutes to set it up on an Intel Core2 Duo @1800MHz and 1G RAM, and another about 15 minutes took to do the configurations it asked for by install time (keyboard, language, partitions, users, passwords, etc.). Being a long time GNU/Linux user, I can't evaluate how easy it is the installer, but I think anyone with minimal computer knowledge can do it.
After installation is finished, at first boot time, you are presented the well knows Mandriva Welcome Screen, than KDE4 shows up. The theme they've chosen for this release of Mandriva is pretty good. I, personally don't like it very much, but I can say it is good design. They tried to maintain the colors of KDE3.x.x and the design of it, in a KDE4 environment. If you are a beginner and you don't know you have new KDE, you can be fooled at first sight. After a few clicks it becomes clear, you have the new KDE4.
I know lot of people don't like KDE4, it's their choice, but I like it. But, if you plan to use it, you have to be prepared that all that eye-candy new stuff and cutting edge desktop technology comes with a price. KDE4 is not yet as mature as KDE3.x.x was/is, but it is usable. If you like it, and if you invest some time to configure it, you will be pleased. Also, there are some applications and features missing in KDE4 compared with KDE3. They will come in the near future.
Now, let's talk about speed... in one word: FAST. Booting is very fast compared with previous releases. It takes 15-30 seconds from pressing the power button on my computer to have KDE4 loaded. KDE4 + Compiz works great, and finaly, with the new 177.x.x nvidia drivers, my desktop works really smooth. No more dropped frames on effects, no more waiting for drawing windows ... it's amazing. You may not be so impressed if you have an older nvidia graphics card. There were serious performance issues with previous nvidia drivers on new cards (series 8xxx and above).
I really can't form an idea about stability just yet. I had no serious problems, no system crashes or stuff like that. Some KDE applications crash from time to time, but that's not a tragedy. You have an error window, and that's all.
So, all in one, this Mandriva 2009.0 release looks excellent, and may really boost the fame of Mandriva. Good job guys!
by Csabi
We have the latest available kernel (2.6.27 rc8), the latest KDE4 (4.1.2 released only a few days before Mandriva 2009.0 release), a brand new design for the Installer and for the famous Mandriva Control Center and many other new stuff.
But this is about my first week with it ... yes, I couldn't wait for the final release, so I installed it from cooker (development mirror) last weekend.
I'm amazed... It is so different ... so new and shiny.
At first, you can observe the new installer. It's much more better looking than any previous one. By design it resembles a little bit of Win95, but just as a bad memory...
The installation is very fast. I've chosen default KDE4 installation and it take me about 15 minutes to set it up on an Intel Core2 Duo @1800MHz and 1G RAM, and another about 15 minutes took to do the configurations it asked for by install time (keyboard, language, partitions, users, passwords, etc.). Being a long time GNU/Linux user, I can't evaluate how easy it is the installer, but I think anyone with minimal computer knowledge can do it.After installation is finished, at first boot time, you are presented the well knows Mandriva Welcome Screen, than KDE4 shows up. The theme they've chosen for this release of Mandriva is pretty good. I, personally don't like it very much, but I can say it is good design. They tried to maintain the colors of KDE3.x.x and the design of it, in a KDE4 environment. If you are a beginner and you don't know you have new KDE, you can be fooled at first sight. After a few clicks it becomes clear, you have the new KDE4.
I know lot of people don't like KDE4, it's their choice, but I like it. But, if you plan to use it, you have to be prepared that all that eye-candy new stuff and cutting edge desktop technology comes with a price. KDE4 is not yet as mature as KDE3.x.x was/is, but it is usable. If you like it, and if you invest some time to configure it, you will be pleased. Also, there are some applications and features missing in KDE4 compared with KDE3. They will come in the near future.
Now, let's talk about speed... in one word: FAST. Booting is very fast compared with previous releases. It takes 15-30 seconds from pressing the power button on my computer to have KDE4 loaded. KDE4 + Compiz works great, and finaly, with the new 177.x.x nvidia drivers, my desktop works really smooth. No more dropped frames on effects, no more waiting for drawing windows ... it's amazing. You may not be so impressed if you have an older nvidia graphics card. There were serious performance issues with previous nvidia drivers on new cards (series 8xxx and above).
I really can't form an idea about stability just yet. I had no serious problems, no system crashes or stuff like that. Some KDE applications crash from time to time, but that's not a tragedy. You have an error window, and that's all.
So, all in one, this Mandriva 2009.0 release looks excellent, and may really boost the fame of Mandriva. Good job guys!
by Csabi
WIDGETIZE